MIAMI – A 19-year-old from Polk County, central Florida (USA), was arrested and charged with second-degree murder for the death of his mother, whom he shot in the heart when he entered her room to ask her to stop smoking in the house, the sheriff’s office reported this Friday.
event occurred this Thursday at the family home in the city of Lake Walles, when Seth Settle was smoking a cigar (habano) in his room and his mother, from 19 years old, came in to reprimand him and tell him to stop smoking.
The recrimination and order did not please the young man, who, just as his mother left the room and closed the door, supposedly took out a pistol and fired, with the misfortune that the bullet went through the door and hit the woman’s heart, said the sheriff of that county, Grady Judd.
According to the arrest affidavit, Settl e told the police officers that the gun had been fired inadvertently, that he left the room and found his mother lying unconscious on the floor.
Next, the young man asked another person in the house to call an ambulance and left the scene in a car.
But the statement from the sheriff’s office indicates that the investigators of the case questioned the young man and found that “he gave five different versions of where he had thrown the gun“.
It was a friend of Settle who contacted the authorities to inform them that he had given him two guns.
“The suspect is trying to make us believe that this was an accident, but he had a loaded gun and intentionally pointed it at the door where he ended up to leave” his mother and fired, Judd said in a statement.
He explained that the boy fled the scene without giving help and then asked a friend to get rid ra of weapons. “These are not the actions of a man who accidentally killed someone. He knew exactly what he was doing,” the Polk County Sheriff said.
Before the police were informed, the woman was transported to a local hospital, where the doctors determined that there were “penetrating wounds in the left breast and armpit”, therefore, before the suspicion, they contacted the authorities.
At first it was thought that it was a medical issue, since no wound or blood was visible on the victim’s body, something that It can happen when the impact of the bullet goes directly through the heart and it stops beating immediately, so that it does not pump blood.
Settle is charged with second-degree murder with a firearm, tampering with evidence, giving false information, and disposing of a weapon in a residential area.