11-year-old's lawyers want police interview suppressed

By Mary Grzebieniak

The boy is accused of shooting 26-year-old woman as she slept.

NEW CASTLE, Pa. — Police questioned an 11-year-old boy about the shooting death of his father’s girlfriend without telling the father.

That’s according to testimony the father, Chris Brown, gave Thursday during a hearing in Lawrence County Common Pleas Court. The hearing had been requested by the boy’s defense counsel in an attempt to suppress statements the boy made during the questioning. If Judge Dominic Motto agrees, a jury in the trial of Jordan Brown, 11, wouldn’t hear the evidence.

Chris Brown testified that his son was interviewed by a Pennsylvania state trooper the morning that Brown’s pregnant girlfriend, Kenzie Houk, 26, was shot to death.

Defense attorneys Dennis Elisco and David Acker are asking that anything the boy said to a state trooper who interviewed him that day at the school be suppressed.

Jordan, 11, is charged with two counts of criminal homicide in the Feb. 20 shotgun killing of Houk. He is suspected of killing her as she lay in bed and then getting on the school bus with Houk’s second-grade daughter, Janessa, to go to Mohawk Elementary School.

The fifth-grader, who is being held in The Edmund L. Thomas Adolescent Center in Erie, arrived in the courtroom Thursday in shackles and accompanied by deputy sheriffs. Dressed in a blue-and-white-striped pullover and khaki slacks, he sat next to his lawyers with shoulders hunched but watched the proceedings attentively.

Pennsylvania State Trooper Janice Wilson, who has since retired, testified that she went to the elementary school on the morning of the slayings upon learning that two children from the victim’s household were there.

She said that at that time, Jordan was not a suspect, and her purpose in going to the school was to ask both him and Houk’s 7-year-old daughter, Janessa, whether the children had seen anything that morning or the night before.

George Sperdute, a guidance counselor at Mohawk Elementary School, testified he sat in on the interview as an advocate for Jordan because the principal had been unable to reach Jordan’s father. He said the school policy is to notify a parent whenever anyone outside the school district speaks to a student. However, Jordan’s father, Chris, testified that he never received any call and was not asked for permission to interview the boy even though he saw Trooper Wilson at his residence before she went to the elementary school.

Elisco asked whether it had been made clear to Jordan that he was free to leave the room. Wilson said Jordan was not in custody and was free to leave the room but that she did not tell him that.

Wilson said she did not remember whether she identified herself to Jordan as a police officer, but she said she tried to keep the interview as nonthreatening as possible, telling him she talked to children as part of her job. She said he was not at that time being interviewed as a suspect but as someone who had possibly witnessed a domestic incident.

District Attorney John Bongivengo said after the hearing that the law requires a suspect who is in custody to be read his Miranda rights and that these could be waived only by a parent or someone else who is there on behalf of the child. But he said the central question is whether the boy was in custody.

No arguments were heard Thursday after the testimony. Judge Motto said he will schedule oral arguments on the suppression motions for a later date.