Case of boy accused of murder in adult court pending report

The boy is accused of shooting the woman as she lay in bed.

NEW CASTLE, Pa. — An 11-year-old boy who’s charged in the shotgun slaying of his father’s pregnant girlfriend is still being prosecuted as an adult, with his case on Lawrence County’s trial list for September.

David Acker, co-counsel for Jordan Brown, said defense lawyers are waiting for a report to come back from an expert on juvenile psychology and delinquency before they petition to have Jordan’s case moved into the county’s juvenile system.

Jordan, meanwhile, is at the Edmund L. Thomas Adolescent Center in Erie, Pa., where he’s been for most of the time since his arrest after the slaying of Kenzie Houk, who was nine months pregnant with a boy, in February.

Houk was killed the morning of Feb. 20 at the farmhouse she rented with Jordan’s father, Christopher Brown, near Wampum, Pa. Police and prosecutors allege the boy shot her in the back of the head as she lay in bed, then he got on the bus with her 7-year-old daughter and went to school. Her 4-year-old daughter was left alone in the house to find the body.

Jordan’s other lawyer, Dennis Elisco, previously told The Vindicator that he would petition to move the boy’s case to juvenile court once a psychological evaluation was finished.

The law requires a show of amenability to rehabilitation before a child can be decertified for adult prosecution, he said.

Pennsylvania requires that anyone age 10 or older who is charged with a homicide go through the adult system first.

Acker said Monday that Dr. Kirk Heilburn of Drexel University, an expert in juvenile psychology, interviewed Jordan in Erie late last month and is now interviewing the boy’s friends and family.

He said he does not know when Heilburn’s report will be ready.

starmack@vindy.com