Mich. boy, 12, fatally stabs playmate, 9, at neighborhood park: police
Jamarion Lawhorn was charged as an adult in the stunning murder of Michael (Conner) Verkerke Monday afternoon in a Grand Rapids, Mich. suburb. The wounded boy ran home screaming before collapsing on his porch and later dying at the hospital.
BY Sasha Goldstein /
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS /
Tuesday, August 5, 2014, 11:03 PM
A 12-year-old inexplicably stabbed his 9-year-old playmate on a Michigan playground Monday before the fatally wounded boy ran home and collapsed on his front porch, later dying at a local hospital, police said.
The older boy appeared calm after the slashing, stunned neighbors said, asking one man if he could use his cellphone.
“I gave him my phone, and I heard him tell the 911 operator, ‘I just stabbed someone. Come and get me. I want to die.’ It was just a sad situation,” Glenn Stacey told the Detroit Free Press.
Four kids were playing at the Pinebrook Village mobile home park in a Grand Rapids, Mich. suburb when Jamarion Lawhorn, who has been charged with murder as an adult, pulled out a knife and allegedly stabbed Michael (Conner) Verkerke several times in the back.
Conner ran home screaming before collapsing. The distraught boy’s mother waited by her dying child’s side as medics responded to the Kentwood neighborhood.
“She was screaming, ‘Where is the ambulance?’ while her boy was laying on the porch bleeding,” neighbor Barb Poelman, who saw the children outside, told the Free Press. “The kids, I thought they were just playing.”
Police are searching for a motive in the murder of Michael (Conner) Verkerke.
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Police are searching for a motive in the murder of Michael (Conner) Verkerke.
As police pulled into the neighborhood to help the dying boy, Jamarion yelled out, “Hello. I’m right here. You’re going the wrong way,” Stacy told the newspaper.
“The only time he raised his voice was when the police came,” he said.
Cops still don’t have a motive in the brutal attack.
Friends were planning a vigil for Wednesday evening in honor of the slain boy.
Jamarion pleaded not guilty at a family court appearance Tuesday and is held without bond.
The 12-year-old is nearly the youngest person ever charged in Michigan with first-degree murder. In 1997, an 11-year-old was charged and later convicted of shooting an 18-year-old. Nathaniel Abraham was held in juvenile detention until the day before his 21st birthday in 2007, the Free Press reported.
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