Ark. grandma stabbed grandchild, killed self

Associated Press

CONWAY, Ark.

An Arkansas woman who adopted her granddaughter after her son’s death in Iraq stabbed the 7-year-old girl in the chest and then set fire to their home in an apparent murder-suicide, authorities said Monday.

Janice Robbins, 63, left a suicide note in her truck before killing her granddaughter, Abby Robbins, and then herself Saturday, Faulkner County sheriff’s spokesman Maj. Andy Shock said. In the note, she wrote that she didn’t want to leave the girl behind.

Robbins stabbed the girl once in the chest, but it was the smoke from the fire, not the stab wound, that killed Abby and her grandmother, the county coroner said.

“We can’t speculate at this point whether or not they were conscious ... but we do know they were alive during the time of the fire,” said coroner Patrick F. Moore.

Authorities found a gas can next to each of the bodies inside the lakeside home, which was engulfed in flames by the time firefighters arrived early Saturday.

Abby’s father, Army Staff Sgt. William T. “Terry” Robbins, was shot and killed by a fellow soldier in Iraq in 2005 in a dispute over alcohol.

Sometime after his death, Janice Robbins adopted Abby, with the process becoming final in 2010.

Officials said there were no indications Robbins was in financial trouble, and investigators were trying to find out if she had been getting counseling for depression.

They’re awaiting results of toxicological testing, which would show if she was taking medication and whether she gave drugs to the young girl before setting the home on fire.

Relatives told investigators that Robbins, a nurse who retired from the Army in 2005 and retired altogether three years later, struggled with depression after her son William’s death, Moore said. Authorities said she had another son who died a few years earlier.