OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. — A 37-year-old woman admitted to strangling her 13-year-old son Monday morning at their home near St. Cloud, the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office said.
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Sheriff Marcos Lopez said deputies were called at about 7:30 a.m. to a home on Crosley Avenue near Deer Run Road.
Lopez said first responders discovered the boy dead in his bed, and his mother, Jasmin Kennedy, told them she had been choking him and killed him.
He said Kennedy lived in the home along with her grandmother, her grandmother’s boyfriend, her 13-year-old son who died and Kennedy’s other child, who is 5 years old. The younger child was uninjured.
“When you hear this news, it’s like you’re getting hit with a brick,” Lopez said. “Somebody so young. Their life was just taken from them, and they haven’t even (begun) to live.”
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He said Kennedy has been charged with domestic violence by strangulation, child neglect and aggravated child abuse.
She could face additional, more serious charges once the medical examiner has officially ruled the child’s cause of death, Lopez said.
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