An 11-year-old boy allegedly shot his father’s pregnant fiancee in the back of the head at close range as she lay in bed in Pennsylvania, before boarding the bus for school as usual.
Jordan Brown was charged on Saturday with the murder of both Kenzie Marie Houk (26) who was eight months pregnant, and her unborn child. She had been lying in bed in their farmhouse in Wampum on Friday morning when Brown allegedly fired at her at close range with his own shotgun.
”This is something that you wouldn’t ever think of in your worst nightmare,” the district attorney, John Bongivengo, told a press conference. ”It’s heinous, the whole situation.”
Police said they had no motive for the killing but relatives suggested he was upset at the prospect of the arrival of the new baby. ”There was an issue with jealousy. He told my son stuff,” Houk’s brother-in-law, Jason Kraner (34) told the Associated Press. ”He actually told my son that he wanted to do that to her.”
The killing came a day after a nine-year-old in Arizona reached a plea deal after being charged with shooting dead his father and his father’s roommate.
Brown is being held in jail pending a preliminary hearing scheduled for Thursday. He is being charged as an adult, in compliance with murder law in Pennsylvania. His lawyer is waiting to see the strength of the police evidence and, in the meantime, will push today to have the case shifted to a juvenile court.
The killing is alleged to have taken place after Brown’s father, Christopher, left for work at a factory about 7am. He had raised Jordan himself. They had moved to the farmhouse with Houk and her two daughters in May last year, and the couple were engaged by Christmas.
One daughter was apparently watching cartoons and eating breakfast when the shot was fired. The other was getting ready for school.
Police say the boy had used his own 20-gauge shotgun, a slimmed-down youth version that his father had given him for Christmas. Such youth guns are easily available in the US, advertised in stores as for ”smaller stature shooters”. He and his father had practised behind the farmhouse, with the eventual intention of going hunting.
After the shooting, Brown allegedly put the shotgun back in his bedroom. Houk’s older daughter, Jessica, seven, took the bus to school. An hour later, Houk’s other daughter, aged four, found her mother dead.
She ran out in her pyjamas to tell men who were cutting trees nearby.
The police picked up Brown from school. They initially focused their investigation on an ex-boyfriend of Houk’s and later on a claim by Brown that there had been a mysterious black vehicle outside the house.
The police said they became suspicious when the details of Brown’s story allegedly kept changing. – guardian.co.uk