Teen pleads guilty to killing 92-year-old neighbor (15 yo black male kills 92 yo white woman)
Washington Post ^ | April 17, 2012
A Forestville teenager pleaded guilty Tuesday to fatally stabbing a 92-year-old neighbor who had acted like a grandmother to him and then making off with her credit card and cash last summer, authorities said.
William Fitts, 16, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, first-degree burglary and theft in the killing in August of Thelma Steele, authorities said.
Prosecutors said that Fitts stabbed Steele several times with a pocketknife after the two argued about family issues and that he then left her for dead on the couch in her home. Her body was not discovered for several days, after Fitts’s family became concerned that mail was piling up at their elderly neighbor’s house.
The crime shocked the neighborhood near Forestville and District Heights where Fitts and Steele lived. Family members on both sides said the two were close. Steele, they said, watched Fitts grow up from the window of her home on East Avenue and often bought him toys and gadgets for Christmas and his birthday.
For his part, Fitts would often stop by Steele’s house with fruit baskets, cookies and tea, family members said.
But one day in August, prosecutors said, Fitts stabbed Steele several times with a pocketknife. He told detectives that the two had argued about family issues and that he returned sometime later to take Steele’s purse, cash and credit card.
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