A mother in Florida was simply trying to correct her son’s habit of sneaking out at night and to curb his use of social media when the kid flipped out. And this was no ordinary mother vs. son argument, not a run-of-the-mill shouting match. No, the petulant child in this spat tried to kill his mother three different ways.
South Florida Sun Sentinel reports
Teen charged as an adult after he’s accused of setting his mom on fire and beating her
17-year-old boy accused of trying to murder his mother by hitting her with a bat and using a Molotov cocktail to set her on fire was charged as an adult by the Broward state attorney’s office.
Davie police say that on Jan. 22, James Edward Monroe filled a glass bottle with alcohol, capped it with a rag and threw it at his sleeping mother’s bedroom ceiling. The bottle burst apart and caused glass and fire to fall on her. Harolyn Monroe was burned and then beaten by her son, who also tried to use a knife against her, according to a police report.
The violence happened after the mother spoke to her son about sneaking out at night and his use of social media, the police report said.
On Tuesday, prosecutors charged James Monroe with attempted murder, arson and possessing a destructive device with intent to do harm. Monroe was moved from the county juvenile detention center to the main jail in Fort Lauderdale. His bond court appearance is scheduled for Thursday.
The night of the attack, the injured Monroe spoke with 911 while outside the family’s home in the 7300 block of Stirling Road.
“My son tried to kill me, please hurry,” she told the call taker.
During the call she lay down inside her SUV while her son was nearby. At the urging of the 911 call taker, she pretended she wasn’t talking with authorities and told her boy that she was holding the phone to her ear because her head hurt.
Because cell phones work just as well as ice in the treatment of contusions. But apparently the dumbass kid fell for it.
When the call taker asked what weapons her son had, Monroe asked her son, “Why did you need to hit me with a bat and set me on fire?”
The teenager’s responses are inaudible on the redacted recording that was released by Davie Police. Monroe later could be heard asking her son to gently straighten out one of her fingers because she thought it was broken, and told him, “You’ve got to communicate. … Communicating is the key.”
The teenager “apparently was a good kid, no problems,” Leone said at the time Monroe was arrested.
Sure, buddy. He dindunuffin. When well-adjusted kids get scolded by their mothers for misbehaving, building and igniting a Molotov cocktail is normally not near the top of the list on how they respond. I’m sorry, this lad has BIG problems.
Monroe told investigators he was not trying to kill his mother, he just wanted to hurt her and knock her unconscious with the baseball bat, the arrest report said.
Oh, well that’s OK then. And the knife that his mother had to pull so forcefully from his hands that the blade broke? I suppose he was just trying to use the tip to clean under her fingernails?
The Broward Public Defender’s Office is representing the teenager.
“James Monroe does not have a criminal record or contact with the legal system, and has a high GPA at his high school,” Chief Assistant Public Defender Gordon Weekes said on Jan. 24.
Correction. He didn’t have contact with the legal system. He does now and he certainly initiated that contact in a big way. Attempted murder and arson. I don’t care what his GPA is, this kid is a thug and I have a sneaking suspicion that this isn’t the first act of violence he’s committed, but rather the first incident he’s been caught for.
Two days after the incident, Harolyn Monroe was still in Memorial Regional Hospital and in stable condition after emergency surgery and treatment for burns, Leone said.
As was said in the video, the mother’s impressive ability to remain calm in a life-threatening situation likely saved her life, but there was something else that helped as well. In the police report the little thug stated that he, “stopped beating her with the bat because the smoke and smoke detector was bothering him.”
Thank God for small annoyances.
