A 14-year-old Wyoming boy has been charged as a adult with the shooting death of his mother Saturday at their home.
Havoc Leone was charged with first degree murder in the death of 41-year-old Theresa McIntosh in an argument over a tablet that he had stolen, the Wyoming Tribune Eagle reported.
While the incident was initially reported as a possible suicide — Leone’s father told investigators “It’d be a lot easier to accept that she killed herself than my son tried to kill her” — detectives soon pieced together what happened.
First responders arrived shortly before 1 p.m. on Saturday and found McIntosh unconscious but still breathing with a gunshot wound to the back of the head, court documents say. She was taken to Cheyenne Regional Medical Center and then lifelighted to UC Health in Fort Collins, Colorado, where she died later that day.
Leone admitted he had stolen the tablet from a client of McIntosh’s house cleaning business and that he argued with his parents over the incident. McIntosh allegedly called him “retarded” and a “thief,” which made him angry.
The boy’s father said it wasn’t the first time they’d had issues with him stealing devices.
At about 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, the father said, he went to the home’s basement to play video games. Leone was supposed to be finishing his homework. A few minutes later, the father heard a “pop,” but thought it was a balloon because he was wearing headphones. He later when upstairs and saw Leone standing on the landing. When he asked what happened, Leone said, “I don’t know, it just went off.”
The father ran downstairs for his phone to call 911 and then returned upstairs to help McIntosh. He said he recognized her gun lying near her and was confused since the gun usually stays in her car.
Later, Leone admitted he had stolen the gun when he had previously thought about killing his mother. He said he thought it about frequently, especially when she told him to do something he didn’t want to do.
The father told deputies that Leone knows how to handle guns and specifically “knows not to point a firearm at someone unless he plans to shoot and kill them.”
The father was reluctant to say what he thought had happened.
“I don’t want to think what I think happened … I don’t even want to put it into words,” he said. “ … and I don’t want to think that because it’s a really f**** up thing for a parent to think … ”
He said that McIntosh had received mental health care from a therapist and had medication, but he said he did not know of any recent suicidal thoughts.
Eventually, Leone told investigators that he had been arguing with McIntosh over the stolen tablet and that she had demanded the tablet’s password, which was written in a notebook that he retrieved from a closet — and also retrieved the handgun he’d stolen from his mother’s car. Then he threw the notebook into the room.
When McIntosh bent down to pick it up, he shot her in the head.
He initially told deputies that his mother handed him the handgun but later admitted he had stolen it and had it hidden in his closet.
He told investigators that he hated his mother and couldn’t tell her “how much he hated her because she doesn’t understand him,” apparently thinking there was some justification for stealing items frequently and for murdering his mother.
Leone is being held on a $500,000 bond, Oil City News reported.
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[Featured image: Theresa McIntosh/Facebook]