Man charged with fatally stabbing his mother plotted the killing for a year, police say
‘This was a brutal scene’, said the police mayor says
A man in central eastern Florida has been arrested on charges of murdering his own mother and police say he plotted the homicide for a year.
Logan Lopez, 24, was arrested on Saturday in Clearwater, a city west of Tampa, after police said a neighbour heard a woman screaming in a nearby apartment.
When officers arrived at The Palms at Countryside Apartments at about 5pm, a woman identified as Mary Beth Lopez was found dead inside that apartment.
The Clearwater Police Department said in a press release and series of tweets on Sunday night that Lopez was being charged with “first-degree murder in the brutal slaying of his mother.”
“He beat her with a hammer and stabbed her multiple times after luring her to his apartment Saturday evening. He said he had been planning the crime for a year,” they wrote.
Major Natalia Illich-Hailey with the Clearwater Police Department said in a press conference shared via WFLA-TV that Lopez told officers himself that he had lured his mother to his home and had planned “to put ‘an end to her’ for a year.”
Major Illich-Hailey noted that Lopez also claimed his mother had “enslaved” him and that “he knew that this was gonna be what he did on this date. He… lured her over there for this purpose.”
“This was a brutal scene,” she added. “You don’t see this very often, even in law enforcement.”
According to police, Mr Lopez has no previous history with the Clearwater Police Department.
However, he had previously been committed to a mental health treatment centre under the Florida Mental Health Act of 1971.
Lopez is being held at the Pinellas County Jail and has retained public defender Margaret Russell, as per People.