TYLER HILL, Pa. — A 10-year-old boy apparently angry that a 90-year-old woman had yelled at him held a cane against her throat and repeatedly punched her, killing her in her bed, prosecutors said.
The boy was being held without bail Tuesday, charged as an adult with criminal homicide in the death of Helen Novak, a woman who was being cared for by his grandfather.
His attorney, Bernard Brown, said he would seek to have the boy released into his father’s care at a bail hearing Wednesday.
State police said the beating occurred Saturday when the boy was visiting his grandfather’s home. The boy denied hurting the woman when he told his grandfather that the woman was “bleeding from her mouth,” the prosecutor said.
The boy’s mother later brought him into a state police barracks, reporting that he had gone into the woman’s room and she had yelled at him. According to the mother, the boy told her that “he got mad, lost his temper and grabbed a cane and put it around Novak’s throat,” police said.
The Associated Press generally doesn’t identify juveniles accused of crimes.
