Police arrested a 16-year-old Tennessee teenager for a gruesome crime where a 7-year-old and his grandmother were beaten to death with a hammer.
Police said the bodies of 59-year-old Sherry Cole and her grandson Jessie Allen were found at about midnight on April 25. The initial report from the Greene County Sheriff’s Department said their bodies were located outside of their home with “puddles of blood” near a parked car alongside “assorted tools, some of which were covered in blood.”
Officers at the home in Chuckey, Tennessee, found the teenage suspect sitting in a car near the scene of the crime. There was a passenger in the car and two other people in another car.
Police said that the teenager admitted to planning the murders the day before, on Sunday.
“[He] admitted to striking the victim in the head with a hammer and had began planning killing earlier the same afternoon,” read a statement from police.
Court documents called the brutal murders “premeditated and intentional.”
District Attorney General Dan Armstrong said he filed a motion for the teenager to be tried as an adult based on the brutality of the crime.
“If transferred to an adult court, the only thing off the table for a minor is the death penalty,” said Armstrong. “The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional. I would have the option to ask for life without parole. That’s still available to ask for a juvenile.”
Neighbors of Cole said in April they were shocked and frightened by the incident.
“I know I won’t sleep for a while now knowing it was that close, especially when I find out how close it was,” said Rosita King to WJHL-TV.
“They killed that little boy. Oh my god. He was one I would always see out here with that older woman. I’m shocked,” said Stephanie Edwards, another neighbor.
Here’s more about the gruesome incident:
Docs: Teen suspect admitted to, planned double homicide
www.youtube.com