What makes a kid a killer? 'Perfect storm' of medication may be cause trends now
The murder of a nine-year-old boy by his sister, 12, has gripped the nation and left people asking: What turns a seemingly ordinary child into a killer?
The Oklahoma girl stabbed her brother with a kitchen knife three times in January in what appeared to be an unprovoked attack before waking up her mother and divulging in floods of tears what she had done.
Doctors have warned that certain drugs or an undiagnosed personality disorder could drive a child to kill — with it now emerging that the girl had just come off an unnamed ADHD medication.
Dr Stuart Fischer, a New York-based emergency medicine expert, warned medications can trigger a 'perfect storm' in children that can trigger behavior changes, in the most extreme cases making children homicidal or suicidal.
A family torn apart: Mom April Lyda with her son, Zander, on a GoFundme appeal for the family after his 12-year-old sister was accused of stabbing him to death
Zander Lyda, was stabbed to death in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on January 5
Bodycam footage shows Oklahoma police arresting a 12-year-old girl for allegedly stabbing her 9-year-old brother to death while their mother slept in January. The Tulsa Police Department said the suspect admitted to the deadly stabbing after being taken into custody. The middle school student can be heard apologizing over and over again, even praying for forgiveness while inside a police cruiser. “Are the handcuffs necessary? I’m a good child,” the girl said in between tear-filled conversations with an officer. She asked whether she was going to jail numerous times before she proclaimed that her life was over. Portions of the bodycam were redacted and blurred by authorities per department policy related to ongoing investigations.
Posted by Law & Crime on Friday, May 26, 2023The horrifying case in Oklahoma resurfaced this week with the release of harrowing bodycam footage of the girl's arrest and her mother, April Lyda's conversations with police.
The footage shows the girl, who DailyMail.com is not naming, barrelling down the stairs yelling 'I'm sorry' several times in between choking sobs.
As she is being placed in handcuffs, the girl sobbed: 'I'm so sorry, I don't know what happened. It's some demonic s**t.'
In an interview yesterday, her mother also revealed how the girl had been taking ADHD medications shortly before the attack.
She said her daughter had been put back on the medications after going back to school. But within a month, when she started cutting her arms, doctors decided to take her off them again.
The young girl cut herself again the night before the attack on her brother, Zander, who had been in bed trying to sleep at the time.
The boy died a short time later from his injuries. But in footage released by Tulsa Police, the mother and daughter both believe that the boy is still alive.
Dr Fischer warned DailyMail.com that medications could have been the driving force that turned the child into a killer.
He said ADHD medication combined with other drugs, like asthma drugs, can have unusual interactions.
He described it as a 'perfect storm of medicines that you could probably see some behavior change in the person that could turn 'dangerous or pathological' in extreme cases.
Common ADHD medications taken in the US such as Adderall can cause a range of side effects including psychosis, where contact is lost with external reality, mood swings, depression and panic attacks.
Coming off the drugs can cause a range of withdrawal symptoms as well, which addiction center the Orlando Recovery Center says includes psychosis, paranoia and hallucinations.
Psychiatric medications meant to treat depression and anxiety, such as Zoloft and Prozac, called SSRIs, can sometimes cause suicidal
