DAYTON, Ohio — The 4-year-old boy’s explanation was even more startling than the sight of him, barefoot and in pajamas, standing alone in the lobby of a highway rest stop.
Judith McConnell and her husband, Michael, had pulled into the stop on Interstate 70 about 50 miles from Dayton just after 9 p.m. Jan. 2.
The boy was by himself, staring out a window. Judith McConnell waved at him as they walked in. What he said next was chilling: “A man came into my house without knocking and shot my mommy.” The man then left him alone at the rest stop, the boy said.
The couple, driving home to Maryland after Christmas in Colorado, took the boy into their car to warm up and called police.
“He’s been abandoned here by a man with a gun,” Michael McConnell told police. “He’s quite disturbed.” As they waited for deputies to arrive, the boy recited the information his mother had drilled into him — his address, his parents’ names, two phone numbers.
When Montgomery County sheriff’s deputies arrived at his family’s white bungalow in Dayton later that night, they found the body of his 29-year-old mother, shot to death.
The woman died after struggling with her attacker, said Sheriff Phil Plummer. The killer also sexually assaulted the boy before taking him to the rest stop, police said.
The Associated Press is not naming the family so as not to identify a victim of an alleged sexual offense.
Police say a man under arrest has confessed to the crimes. Montgomery County Prosecutor Mathias Heck is considering whether to seek the death penalty.
The chilling story began about a week before Christmas, when the boy’s parents’ car was stolen while they celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary at a concert in Columbus.
Police say the car, and the information inside it, led the killer to the family’s home, about 75 miles away.
Neighbor Steve Hopkins, 41, described the boy as a precocious kid quick to make friends.
“When he met you, he knew you,” Hopkins said.
On the night of Jan. 2, the husband was working at a bar. Police say his wife was home with their son.
The Dayton Daily News, citing investigators, reported that the woman broke free from an intruder, grabbed a knife, stabbed the man in the back and was shot twice in the abdomen during a struggle.
Two days later, police arrested Charlie Myers, 22, of Columbus.
