Nine-Year-Old Adoptee Shoots his Adoptive Mom to Death

“A Detroit mother who was allegedly shot and killed by her adoptive son said to doctors she feared she was ‘raising the next serial killer’ just months before her death, grieving family members have revealed.

Pauline Randol, 51, was found dead early Monday morning at her home on Fawn River Township having suffered a fatal gun-shot wound.

The gunman responsible, police say, was her nine-year-old son who she adopted from Indiana three years ago.

Investigators believe the boy, who hasn’t been named because of his age, opened fire on Pauline with a rifle he found inside the home.

He now faces murder and firearm charges, though it’s unclear whether he’ll be prosecuted as an adult or juvenile.

Pauline and the boy were scheduled to meet with a mental health professional the day after she was found dead, as family members say she was growing increasingly concerned about the boy’s mental state.

Pauline’s daughter, 23-year-old Reagan Martin, said the boy’s mother was drug addict and he had a number of mental ‘scars’ from his childhood.

Another of her daughters, Harley Martin, revealed that the 51-year-old had ‘told her doctor one time she was so scared she was raising the next serial killer’.

Harley, however, was adamant that the boy was not a ‘bad kid’ and said ‘this was not something he would have just done to be spiteful, to be mean.’

‘He loved his mom. I don’t want people to think he did not love his mom,’ she told 24 Hour News 8.

‘He had lost of mental health issues that were not being helped. He started on [new] medication last week. Who knows how that reacted?’

Harley said her mother was aware of the boy’s mental health issues and troubled upbringing before she adopted him in February 2016.

‘But she took him in to care for him as her own,’ Harley told the Detroit Free Press. ‘She had been trying to reach out for help by his family doctor… who blamed her for [these] issues.’

In court Tuesday, the boy asked where his mother was and Harley said ‘he doesn’t know what he did’.

‘He doesn’t understand why he can’t come home or anything,’ she continued. ‘He’s traumatized by what he saw in there. That’s all he told my dad about was seeing that. It’s going to mess him up for a really long time because he does not realize what he’s done.’

A neighbor told WWMT the boy was a second-grader at Congress Elementary School in Sturgis. Another mother from the school told the station that the child had threatened her 8-year-old daughter last year.

‘He told her that he wanted to get a knife and stab her and watch her die, and watch her mother cry,’ Alecia Pieronski recalled of a conversation between the suspect and her daughter in February 2018.

‘My want was to remove him from the school and protect the children. I do feel in my whole heart the teachers and principals did everything they could do.’

The circumstances of the killing and details of why the child is considered a suspect have not been released. It’s not clear how many times Pauline was shot.

Her daughter Reagan added that she believed her mother would still be alive if she had received the psychiatric treatment she’d been seeking for her son.

She said her mother tried to reach out to various mental health services in St. Joseph County but their family’s insurance wouldn’t cover the medical costs.

‘She eventually got an appointment where she had to spend money out [of her] pocket, but that was supposed to be for Tuesday, and it was too late,’ Reagan said.

‘My mother’s death lays in the hands of people failing to educate in mental issues and failing to listen when helped is being begged for.’

Sheriff Bradley Balk says the youth was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation at a state-run juvenile facility on Tuesday.

Police were carrying out forensics interviews to determine the child’s state of mind.

‘Maybe this a wake-up call to other schools when you have that troubled child screaming for help to do something,’ Pieronski added.

In a Facebook post Randol cryptically spoke about a child that was ‘missing skills’ and said she needed ‘support and understanding’.

Sturgis Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Arthur Ebert said in a statement: ‘Our community has experienced a tragic event. As a district it is our goal to provide support to our students, staff, and the community.

‘We are limited in what we can share due to privacy laws and the sensitive nature of this tragedy. The St. Joseph County Sheriff’s Department is leading the investigation regarding this event that occurred outside of school, including the release of information about the investigation.’

Though neighbor Christy Miller described Pauline’s murder as ‘a sad situation’, another said they weren’t surprised to hear the boy had been arrested.

‘My wife and I both, when we heard that the woman was shot, we both looked at each other and said “I bet it was him”,’ Joseph Lancaster told FOX 17 Wednesday. ‘The little boy, because I have grandkids. I have one the same age and I’ve got smaller ones. And he would stand in the tree line over there and point his BB gun at him and shoot at them.

‘It’s just crazy, scary. You know, he could have shot anybody around here.’ ”

‘She was scared she was raising the next serial killer’: Detroit mother who was ‘shot dead by her adoptive nine-year-old son’ was scheduled to take him to a mental health professional the day after she was found dead

[Daily Mail 5/9/19 by Luke Kenton]

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