13-Year-Old Charged For Killing Boy (Photos)

A 13-year-old boy from Grand Rapids, Michigan, was charged as an adult for killing a 9-year-old boy.

Jamarion Lawhorn was found guilty of first-degree murder after stabbing Connor Verkerke, 9, to death in August 2016. He is now the youngest convicted murderer in the history of Kent County, Michigan.

Anita Lawhorn, the boy’s mother, told WXMI that she was troubled by the fact he was charged as an adult.

“He’s a baby. He’s charged as an adult, but ya know at the end of the day he was still born March 14, 2002. He’s still a kid,” she said. “I understand the severity of the case, but he’s not an adult and I know he has to be punished for his actions and I do not believe he should get an adult sentence.”

Anita and her son’s stepfather, Bernard Harrold, were both accused of abusing the boy prior to his murder conviction. Anita is currently awaiting trial for abuse and Harrold was recently convicted.

In court, the 13-year-old claimed that Harrold beat him with an extension cord — something to which the stepfather never admitted. He did, however, admit to spanking him with a belt and hitting him in the chest. Harrold, the boy said, treated him “like a slave.”

The parents, who testified in court hoping Lawhorn would be acquitted on grounds of insanity, said they stopped spanking him after a CPS investigation took place following abuse allegations in 2013.

“I left the marks,” Harrold admitted. “I apologized to him and I never used corporal punishment again.”

Lawhorn told pediatric child abuse expert Dr. Debra Simms that he had “a problem with anger.” Simms also revealed that Lawhorn had a history of behavior that included setting fires in his house and getting in trouble for taking a fake knife to school.

The boy was convicted after a three-day deliberation. Prosecutors stated that he had planned for some time to kill a person, but the defense argued that he committed the murder so he could get out of his abusive home. 

“A 13 year old know exactly what is doing who planted that knife and then waited for a white kid to come along so we can slaughter them why didn’t you just go to the police and tell him what was happening at his house instead of murdering somebody some 13 year olds should be tried as adults and he’s one of them and now his parents are crying,” one Mad World News reader commented on the site’s Facebook page.

“The parents should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law! They are accomplices in this murder. This kid had many other options to get away from his abusers but chose to take the life of a child instead,” another wrote.

“He should be tried as an adult, there were many other options he had open to him, police, schools, hospitals, doctors office, all report abuse,There is no excuse for this behavior and he planned it,” another added. 

Sources: WXMI, WOOD, Mad World News/Facebook / Photo credit: Matty Ring/Wikimedia Commons, WXMI, WOOD