A 15-year-old boy who stabbed his mother to death in May 2017 and escaped from juvenile hall during the trial was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter.
The juvenile has been in custody since he was 13, when he was arrested for stabbing his 48-year-old mother several times in the abdomen in their Garden Grove home, police said. Juvenile court Judge Douglas J. Hatchimonji did not publicly state Wednesday why he believed the boy committed manslaughter and not murder.
The juvenile's attorney, David Hammond, told the Orange County Register there was evidence that the boy acted in self-defense after years of abuse by his mother.
Police said in 2017 that they had been called to the home before, not because of domestic violence, but due to other undisclosed matters related to the child.
After stabbing his mother, the boy ran about a mile away from his home and was arrested at a local shopping center shortly after a person found the woman on the sidewalk and called for help. She told investigators that her son attacked her. She was taken to UCI Medical Center where she later died that night.
The juvenile made headlines in April after escaping from juvenile hall during the trial and spending nearly a day on the loose before being found at a McDonald’s.
He faces up to an 11-year sentence for the manslaughter charge.
