Mom of 12-year-old 'brother killer' seen visiting her troubled daughter at ... trends now
The mother of the 12-year-old girl who stabbed her younger brother to death in a 'demonic' rage has opened up to DailyMail.com about the horrifying night that she lost both of her children.
In an exclusive interview, April Mitchell, 34, told DailyMail.com that she's now forced to visit her daughter in the juvenile justice system's equivalent to a maximum-security prison while simultaneously mourning the loss of her nine-year-old son Zander.
'What I remember is the screaming,' Mitchell says of that January night in their Oklahoma home. 'I was upstairs and they were downstairs and there was so much screaming.'
By the time she ran down to the living room, Mitchell said, Zander was lying on the couch.
'He didn't look hurt at first,' she said. 'There wasn't any blood. But he kept screaming ''she stabbed me, she stabbed me,'' I said, ''Who? Who stabbed you?'' I thought maybe someone came into the house.
'I was looking for a bad guy, not one of my children.'
Her daughter, Mitchell said, ran outside and kept saying how sorry she was over and over.
'I pulled his shirt up and saw the puncture wounds,' teary Mitchell added, her voice trailing as she looked away.
Within hours, Zander was dead and Mitchell's daughter was facing murder charges. Mitchell described the girl's anger towards her brother that night as a 'demonic rage'.
April Mitchell's 12-year-old daughter stabbed her son Zander, nine, to death in January in a 'demonic' rage. She's pictured after visiting her daughter in the juvenile justice system's equivalent to a maximum-security prison
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Mitchell says that her daughter loved her brother and blames ADHD medication for the attack
'There are child murderers incarcerated with her in that place, but they are 15 or 16, and they are in gangs,' Mitchell said. 'My daughter is just 12, and she killed her 9-year-old brother while they watched TV on the couch. That's different from anyone there'
DailyMail.com has chosen not to publish the name of the girl because of her age and nature of her crime.
She is in detention in a Tulsa neighborhood where homeless drug addicts shoot up and smoke crack pipes in full view of parents who visit their incarcerated children.
Mitchell's children were watching the Nickelodeon show Henry Danger when her daughter stabbed her son
'There are child murderers incarcerated with her in that place, but they are 15 or 16, and they are in gangs,' Mitchell said as she was seen in DailyMail.com photos leaving the Tulsa County Juvenile Center last week.
'My daughter is just 12, and she killed her 9-year-old brother while they watched TV on the couch. That's different from anyone there.'
'They love each other,' she said, 'I'm sure of that.'
Her daughter is accused of picking up a five-inch steak knife from a knife block in the single mom's kitchen and plunging it three times into her brother Zander's chest for no apparent reason on January 5.
Zander, who loved biking, playing soccer and basketball, died shortly after he was taken to the hospital.
The attack occurred after 11pm January 5 as the siblings sat alone on the living-room couch watching their favorite show, Nickelodeon's superhero comedy Henry Danger.
Juvenile justice records are confidential, but DailyMail.com has confirmed the girl is under the care of a team of counselors and a psychiatrist.
'Kids in that facility are well taken care of,' a Tulsa County court official, who asked to remain anonymous, told DailyMail.com.
'The detention center looks like a school in some parts. They've got a nice gym and an outdoors recreation area. They're getting regular classes during the day. Most of the kids there are going through intensive therapy.
'Of course, they get locked down at night. There are no bars on the doors of the rooms, but the doors are see-through.'
After a two-hour hearing Friday afternoon, a juvenile court judge decided to extend the girl's detention pending a final mental evaluation. She could be transferred to a non-detention mental care facility for children later this year.
Mitchell says she is relieved authorities agree she needs help more than prison.
'She has gained some weight in detention,' Mitchell said. 'She is going to school and she has good grades. She remembers some things about that night, and some things she doesn't remember. But she knows what she did and she knows there'll be consequences.
'Both of us try not to think about it. Sometimes, I pretend she and Zander are on a trip somewhere and that they'll come home and things will be like they were before.
'But we
