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Boy arraigned on murder charges
The child’s lawyers expect to have their client moved to juvenile court.
NEW CASTLE, Pa. — The defendant sat at the table in the courtroom, flanked by his two attorneys as the judge explained his rights.
Judge Dominick Motto, the Lawrence County president judge, slowly and carefully explained the two charges against him — first-degree criminal homicide and first-degree criminal homicide of an unborn child. The judge even took time to explain what a fetus is and asked the defendant if he understood everything.
Eleven-year-old Jordan Brown, still in the system as an adult in the Feb. 20 shotgun slaying of his father’s girlfriend, Kenzie Houk, 26, and her unborn son at their farmhouse near Wampum, Pa., nodded each time he was asked if he understood.
His arraignment Wednesday ended then with a report to the judge that contained a not-guilty plea and his signature.
It was not easy for Debbie Houk, Kenzie’s mother, and Jennifer Kraner, her sister, to watch, they said later.
“It’s a long process,” Houk said outside the courtroom, adding that she wished Jordan would have pleaded guilty.
“How can someone sit there and say they’re not guilty when everything is there,” she asserted, referring to the evidence investigators say links the boy to the killing of Kenzie Houk as she lay in bed between 8:30 and 9 a.m. that morning.
The blended family living at the farmhouse also included Jordan’s father, Chris Brown, and Kenzie Houk’s two young daughters, Adalynn, 4, and Janessa, then 7.
Investigators allege that after Jordan shot Kenzie Houk in the back of the head, he caught the school bus with Janessa.
Adalynn found her mother’s body and appealed for help to tree-trimmers working in the yard of the rented farmhouse on Wampum-New Galilee Road.
State police searching Jordan Brown’s room later that day found what they believe to be the murder weapon — the boy’s youth-model 20-gauge shotgun. Janessa also told investigators that she heard a loud bang inside the house before she and Jordan got on the bus. Chris Brown was at work.
The boy was charged as an adult because state law requires that anyone over the age of 10 who is charged with first-degree murder go through the adult system first.
He was lodged at first in the county jail, then sent to a juvenile detention center in Beaver County. He was moved five days afterward to the Edmund L. Thomas Adolescent Center in Erie after Lawrence County officials decided it would be cheaper to house him there.
His attorneys have indicated they intend at some point to petition to have the boy moved to the juvenile court system. Atty. Dennis Elisco said after the arraignment that they will still do so as soon as counselors at the Erie center have had enough time to assess the boy. Those counselors will report whether they believe Jordan can be rehabilitated in the juvenile system.
District Attorney John Bongivengo said Jordan’s case will be placed on the trial list next month, though it is not likely to go to court that soon. There are 400 cases on the list ahead of it, he said.
Meanwhile, said Debbie Houk, the family needs prayers.
Kenzie Houk’s daughters have been through Easter and one birthday without their mother, she said. Janessa turned 8 on March 16.
They lost a baby brother they were excited about, she said. Kenzie was about two weeks away from giving birth to the boy she was going to name Christopher.
For Mother’s Day, the girls have a picture that says “best mommy in the world” on it, she said. They have a cross with roses on it, “and we put something in the paper,” she said. She will take the girls to visit their mother’s grave.