By Calvin Palmer
A Pennsylvania jail warden is to ask a judge to move an 11-year-old boy accused of killing his father’s pregnant girlfriend to a juvenile detention center.
Charles Adamo warden of Lawrency County jail said today that his jail, which houses 300 inmates, cannot offer proper long-term care for Jordan Brown.
Brown is charged as an adult with using his own 20-gauge shotgun to kill 26-year-old Kenzie Marie Houk while she lay in bed on Friday.
He has been held in isolaton at the county jail since early yesterday.
His attorney Dennis Elisco said that jail isn’t the place for an 11-year-old. He cries and is scared. He misses his dad. He wants to go back to school. He wants to go home.
“It’s surreal, just surreal,” said Elisco.”This is a typical 11-year-old. He’s crying. He’s scared. He’s worried. He’s just sitting in there alone, thinking about stuff.
“And I don’t believe this kid did this. I am most interested in seeing the physical evidence. The physical evidence will be shedding some light on this kid’s innocence.
“He doesn’t even know what is a dream and what is real.”
Jordan Brown is the son of Houk’s live-in boyfriend, Chris Brown. The couple lived at a farmhouse on Wampum-New Galilee Road, New Beaver, with the boy and her two daughters. Chris Brown is the father of the child Houk carried, a boy that was due to be born in two weeks.
Prosecutors allege that Jordan Brown shot Houk with his youth-model .20-gauge shotgun around 8:00 a.m. Friday.
No one has revealed a possible motive, but police found the shotgun in Jordan Brown’s bedroom and matching shell wadding in Houk’s body, according to court records.
Lawrence County District Attorney John Bongivengo said that sometime after Chris Brown left for work and the older children left for school, Houk’s 4-year-old daughter woke up and came downstairs to watch cartoons on television and eat.
She went upstairs some time after 9:00 a.m. and saw her mother lying on her side in bed. The woman had been shot once in the back of the head and the shot had been fired from close range, Bongivengo said.
For Chris Brown, the events since Friday morning have turned him into an emotional wreck.
“There isn’t much to ease Chris Brown’s mind,” Elisco said. “He’s emotionally wrecked. He’s very, very shaken.
“He’s lost the love-of-his-life, his soon-to-be son, and his son is charged with murder.”
Nevertheless, Chris Brown believes in his son’s innocence and when he visited the boy at the jail yesterday, he was able to cry and hug and hold his boy, Elisco said.
Elisco said he plans to seek bail for the boy and have the case moved to juvenile court.
[Based on reports by the Associated Press and Beaver County Times.]
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