12-year-old boy charged with murder of adult neighbor to steal his guns
Police identified the child from a pizza delivery receipt found at the victim's home.
A 12-year-old boy in Wisconsin was arrested and charged with the murder of his 34-year-old neighbor after he refused to sell the child guns.
On March 18, Brandon Felton was found dead in his Milwaukee home. His body was discovered days after his death by a cousin, who became worried when he stopped answering phone calls and text messages.
When the cousin arrived at Felton’s home, he found his front door unlocked and the trunk of his car wide open, according to a criminal complaint.
Felton had been killed three days earlier by a gunshot wound to the head, according to a coroner’s report.
At the scene of the crime, police found a delivery receipt from the day of the murder for a Domino’s pizza with an unknown phone number on it.
When they tried calling the number, a child picked up the phone.
The child, who has not been named by authorities due to his status as a minor, admitted he knew the 34-year-old man. Felton was his grandmother’s neighbor, and he would sometimes stop over to play video games with him.
However, he initially denied ordering the pizza or being in Felton’s home on March 15.
Eventually, the child’s mother brought him back to police investigators when she learned that he lied. He first admitted to being in Felton’s home when he was killed, but blamed the murder on another person he called ‘Sam’ – who he said also stole Felton’s AR-15 style rifle and shotgun.
However, the criminal complaint against the child alleges that he targeted Felton after the adult refused to sell his guns to the 12-year-old and his friends.
Police searched the child’s cell phone and found text messages from March 15, seemingly admitting to the crime.
‘I’m gonna do it to Brandan… Or should I kill him,’ the child-suspect texted a friend. ‘He on the couch laying down… Cuz I can belt [kill] him rn [right now].’
‘Noooo. Go in da bathroom n call me,’ his friend replied.
‘I’m belting him don’t got time for dude going after my family,’ the suspect says in the last text message that night, sent around 9.34pm.
Cell phone location data also placed the child at Felton’s home multiple times on the night of the murder. Around 9.30pm that evening, he called a friend and asked to be picked up from the house.
The child was charged as an adult for first-degree intentional homicide on Monday, March 27. His bond was posted at $100,000.
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