A Wisconsin elementary school student has been charged as an adult after the cold-blooded killing of his mother.
The boy initially lied to authorities about fatally shooting his mother, saying it was an accident, but later confessed he was upset because she would not buy him a video game headset from Amazon.
The young child, whose name is being withheld because he is 10 years old, was charged as an adult with first-degree reckless homicide on Thursday, Dec. 1, according to NBC News, and faces a maximum of 60 years in prison if convicted.
His sister said he struggled with “rage issues,” “becomes very angry and acts out,” and has been seeing a therapist who gave him a “concerning diagnosis” regarding his mental health.
Although it’s rare for Wisconsin to try someone under 17 as an adult, state law requires children as young as 10 to be charged as adults for certain serious crimes.
According to reports, the boy wanted his mother to purchase a virtual reality headset on Amazon, but when she told him “No,” he decided to make her pay with her life.
Around 6:50 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 21, he shot his mom, Quiana Mann, at close range in their Milwaukee home. The shot entered Mann’s right eye and exited through the back of her skull. Prosecutors allege the boy then went upstairs to his 26-year-old sister’s bedroom and told her his mother had been shot. The sister found Mann dead and contacted 911.
Initially, the boy told detectives his mother got him up at 6 a.m. but left to go downstairs to do laundry. He went into his mother’s bedroom, got her gun, and went to the basement where the washer and dryer were located. He was twirling the gun around, and it “accidentally went off,” a criminal complaint says.
However, police say he later recanted that story and admitted to purposely aiming and firing at his mom.
According to the complaint, the boy confessed to shooting her because “his mother would not allow him to have something from Amazon that he wanted to have,” and he was upset she woke him up too early that day. Mann woke her son up at 6 a.m., half an hour earlier than she normally does.
When she got him up at 6:30 a.m., he went into his mother’s room, secured her key for the lockbox with the gun, and went to the basement, positioning himself in a shooter’s stance.
As the boy pointed the gun at his mom, she asked him, “Why do you have that? Put that down,” an aunt told USA Today.
When the mother walked towards the boy, he fired the weapon, police say. The child said he tried to scare her, thinking he would hit the wall, but “shot her in the face when she was approximately three feet away.”
Court documents say he went upstairs and placed the gun in the living room closet before telling his sister his mother had been shot.
Authorities said the boy acknowledged that he knew “that guns are dangerous and can kill people.”
Interviews with another family member revealed the boy often was cruel to animals. When he was 4 years old, Mann’s son picked up the family puppy by the tail and swung it around until it whined and howled in pain,” Fox News reports.
During the summer of 2022, a family member alleges he caused an explosion in the house, burning furniture and the carpet after filling a balloon up with a flammable liquid.
The complaint also revealed the boy “has five different imaginary people that talk to him” and that his mother had installed cameras throughout the house to watch the child.
Two weeks before the shooting, his sister said someone had unplugged all of the cameras in the home.
After killing his mother, the boy “never cried and showed no remorse,” his aunt said. Instead, the next morning, he logged on to his mother’s Amazon account and ordered the Oculus Virtual Reality Headset that she refused to buy the night before her untimely demise. After he made the purchase, his aunt brought the child to his grandmother’s home to meet with Child Protective Services workers.
When he observed his grandmother crying, he said “without any empathy or compassion: ‘I’m really sorry for what happened. I’m sorry for killing my mom,'” asking immediately afterward “if his Amazon package arrived,” report shows.
Even with his troubled history and charges for his mother’s murder, one of the boy’s lawyers, Angela Cunningham, wants the court and public to remember he is still a child.
“This is an absolute family tragedy,” said Cunningham. “I don’t think anybody would deny or disagree with that. … The adult system is absolutely ill-equipped to address the needs of a 10-year-old child.”
Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson made a statement about the boy’s arrest, saying, “Any time there’s violence that happens in Milwaukee, whether it’s committed by someone who’s 10 years old or much older than that, that gives me pause.”
Court records show the child made his first appearance in court on Friday, Dec. 2, where a cash bond was set at $50,000. His next hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 7.
