A community in Kentwood is in mourning following a fatal stabbing that took place between two kids on the playground Monday evening.
It happened Monday at Pinebrook Village Mobile Home Park at about 6 p.m.
Police said four children were at the playground inside the mobile home park when a 12-year-old pulled out a knife and began stabbing Michael Conner Verkerke, 9, repeatedly.
That 12-year-old suspect has been identified by police as Jamarion Lawhorn. He is being charged as an adult with open murder and has pleaded not guilty.
Lawhorn is being held without bond.
Police said Verkerke was stabbed in the back. They said he ran to his home, which is a short distance from the playground. Once he arrived, Verkerke collapsed on the porch. He died a short time later at a nearby hospital.
Initial news report at mlive.com indicated some really weird statements from the attacker, suggesting some sort of psychotic break or suicidal inclination. Abnormal at any age but waaaaay abnormal for a 12 yo at a playground.
Races are not being reported in stories I’ve seen, but given the names I am guessing the victim was white (or at least white father) and the perpetrator was probably not white. Guessing only. See my comment above though. I will give 1 billion to 1 odds that the attacker is from some kind of messed up family or lack of family.
Between this and the two teen girls who tried to murder a friend because of “slender man”, WTF is the world coming to?
And Jamarion is off to a promising start. If Obama had a 12 year old son, etc.
If convicted, Lawhorn would be held in a juvenile facility until he’s 21. Every three months, his behavior would be evaluated to determine whether he should be released or not. Once he’s 21, he would either be released or sent to an adult prison.
A community in Kentwood is in mourning following a fatal stabbing that took place between two kids on the playground Monday evening.
A thing that aggravates me to no end is the way that this is worded, as though it was a transaction, or mutual interaction of some kind. If the witness accounts prove out, the 12 year old simply walked up and murdered this little boy three years his junior by stabbing him in the back! Thats not mutual interaction, it was the single minded action of a psychotic, or depraved psychopathic personality!
Did you read all of what he did and said afterward? As much as I like to see someone literally burn at the stake over this it isn’t the boy who did the stabbing. Based upon what he said and barring unusual circumstance his parents and his shit sucking community are almost certainly to blame. I can’t f***ing stand it anymore.
I’m all for scortched Earth against little Jamarion, his “parents”, and his shit sucking community. He doesn’t get a free pass cause of his age, not saying that is what you are suggesting here.
Amazingly enough when I was twelve years old I never murdered anyone.
Yes. Chances are this will reveal one or some combination of:
1-extreme hatred at the perp’s home, whether Black Panther style, Hamas, or something else/similar;
2-severe physical abuse of the 12 yo perp
3-family history of psychotic behavior - I don’t mean antisocial, I mean out of touch with reality, lashes out because he thinks the victim is a killer honeybee from Mars or something equally crazy.
I’d bet on #s 1 and 2 in combination, but we’ll see.
Please. Neither did I but we didn’t grow up in that shithole. No rocket science involved here.
And to clarify I’m not condoning violence in the black community due to rough upbringings, but rather acknowledging that this child is a product of his environment and especially that his crime is exceptional for his age.
I saw this on my local news today… Undoubtedly this goes back to his family life…
Kid has to be severely messed up in the head to go stab a kid on the playground, walk over to a neighbor doing yard work to borrow a phone and calmy tell the police “I just stabbed someone.”
Sad day for West Michigan. Where were either set of parents during all of this? No idea.
I don’t know anything about his family except that his brother is a stud with rocket systems. My wife didn’t have parents, she had a egg and sperm donor and some grandparents that came in and out of her young life.
What does any of this anecdotal evidence prove beyond illustrating that some children demonstrate remarkable resilience in the presence of horrendous domestic and social environments, other children suffer horrible consequences, and the majority generally end up somewhere in the middle of the bell curve?
There are numerous cases where children from various social-economic backgrounds, family models, and cultures have committed horrendous acts of cold blooded murder. I read a recent story where two pre-teen boys took turns sexually assaulting a little girl as the other one held her down. A Google search will yield stories of pre-teens killing other children for no other reason than just to watch them die. Evil is among us, sometimes it’s wrapped up in someone’s cute little buddle of joy. Kids such as this will always be a threat to society and should be dealt with accordingly.
