Jurors in North Carolina have convicted a man for murdering his mother and injuring his father in a beating he claimed was fueled by drugs and sleep deprivation.

Christopher McCullough was found guilty of first-degree murder Friday in the 2023 death of his 75-year-old mother Mary McCullough. Local ABC affiliate WTVD reported that McCullough was not convicted of other charges, included the attempted murder of his father and larceny of a dog.

He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The jury had deliberated for around seven hours after receiving the case on Thursday.

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The defendant’s father, John McCullough, testified against his son. According to a courtroom report from local CBS affiliate WNCN, the father told jurors ever since his son was seven, he was “uncontrollably violent” and had “superhuman-like strength.” They tried everything to treat his issues from sending to boarding school to stays at mental health hospitals. None of it worked. Eventually, he and his wife and obtained a domestic violence injunction against him and forbade him from entering their home.

But he ignored that order and entered the home on Aug. 8, 2023. He reportedly told jurors he was high on Adderall and other drugs and hadn’t slept in six days. He said he asked his parents for gas money. When they refused, he began beating his father — all in the presence of his 4-year-old son — though he did not admit to hurting his sickly mother, who used an oxygen tank and weighed just 100 pounds.

“Me and my dad got in a fight, I struck him twice to the ground, I noticed that my mother was face down,” he said, according to local NBC affiliate WRAL.

The younger McCullough then took his son and fled. Cops rushed to the home to aid the elder McCulloughs. There was blood everywhere and both victims were unconscious, cops testified.

“I noticed she had bruises and cuts on her arms,” Raleigh police Officer Phillip Merle said, per WNCN. “Because of the way she was laying, I noticed she had a large puddle of blood underneath her neck. My training officer asked who did this to her. And she was able to grunt out, ‘My son’.”

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She was rushed to the hospital where she died nearly a week later.

Christopher McCullough’s son, now 6, was not physically injured in the incident but has experienced post-traumatic stress disorder from witnessing the incident.

“[The boy] has disclosed witnessing the defendant hurting nanny and poppy,” his therapist Tara Pawlyk reportedly testified. “That poppy was on the ground while the defendant covered his mouth, limiting his ability to breathe. He has also disclosed nanny was laying on the stairs, [which] the defendant had bashed her head against repeatedly.”

A 22-year-old New Hampshire man stands accused of beating his girlfriend’s 23-month-old son to death when he was alone with the boy and she was grocery shopping.

Annthoni Bliss is charged with second-degree murder in the January 2024 death of Luca Hudson, the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office said in a statement. The Keene Police Department and medical personnel responded the morning of Jan. 14, 2024, to an apartment for a young child in medical distress. They arrived to find Luca unconscious and not breathing. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital where he died three days later, just a month shy of his second birthday.

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A year-plus long investigation led to charges being filed against Bliss, who had started dating Luca’s mother about a month prior to the incident after knowing each other for several years, a probable cause arrest affidavit said. The medical examiner determined the cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head and the manner of death homicide.

Bliss and the boy’s mother denied doing anything to hurt Luca. Bliss had been staying at his girlfriend’s apartment along with Luca and the boy’s older brother, cops said. Detectives noted that Luca showed no signs of injury in the days leading up to his death.

Through interviews and reviewing surveillance footage, investigators believe the abuse happened the night before cops responded to the apartment when Luca’s mother made a nearly hour-long trip to the grocery store, according to the affidavit. In text messages between her and Bliss while she was out, the defendant made no mention that anything may have been amiss. He said Luca’s older brother had fallen asleep.

“How’s shopping baby,” Bliss allegedly texted her.

“going to check out now,” she responded.

“Okay my love,” Bliss texted.

A Florida man allegedly beat a woman to death last June outside a Church’s Chicken in Tampa and left her body to rot near the drive-thru lane.

Michael Canty, 54, stands accused of second-degree murder in the death of 48-year-old Dawn Morrison. The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office said in a press release deputies responded to the fried chicken joint at 2219 E. Fletcher Ave. just after 10 a.m. June 18 for a death investigation. There, they discovered Morrison’s partially-decomposed body under some mulch near the restaurant’s drive-thru area.

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An autopsy determined she died from a blow to the head. Surveillance videos indicated she died on June 15, according to a motion for pretrial detention. Several videos from neighboring businesses showed she and a man walking together behind Church’s Chicken shortly before midnight on the night in question. The cameras did not show the murder itself but picked up a woman’s voice yell “quit it, quit it” and “help,” the motion said.

Video also showed the man walk away from the area, change his shirt and throw away items in a dumpster, cops wrote. Police sent out a photo of the man in the images and a officer found a man that matched the man’s description a few blocks from the murder scene on June 20. Cops identified the suspect as Canty.

Detectives also noted he was wearing the same pants and boots along with a New England Patriots drawstring bag. Canty tried to claim he hadn’t seen the victim since the day before the murder but he changed his tune once showed surveillance images that showed him and Morrison together that night. He then claimed he left Morrison as she sat on a curb near Church’s Chicken. He said he threw away his shirt because it was “dirty,” cops said.

A Maine man was undergoing a mental health evaluation after he was charged with allegedly murdering his wife and accused of assaulting his mother.

Maine State Police said in a news release that on the morning of Feb. 19, a 911 call reported an “incident” at a home in Readfield, Maine. When first responders arrived at the scene, they found the body of his wife, Margeaux Whittemore, 32, in the driveway of the home, reportedly unclothed. Inside the home, they found his mother, Dorothy Whittemore, 67, suffering from “critical” injuries. Sam Whittemore, 34, was tracked down by troopers after he allegedly fled the scene.

A Florida nurse likely will be blind for the rest of her life after a patient allegedly attacked her unprovoked.

Deputies from the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office wrote an arrest affidavit that the patient, later identified as 33-year-old Stephen Eric Scantlebury, had been admitted to HCA Florida Palms West Hospital under the Baker Act, which allows people to be involuntarily detained and examined for mental health issues, and was receiving treatment. Shortly before 1:30 p.m. Tuesday the nurse walked into Scantlebury’s third-floor room. Witnesses said the suspect inexplicably “jumped on top of his bed, and then jumped onto and attacked the victim,” according to the affidavit.

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Scantlebury allegedly stood over the victim and repeatedly punched her in the face. A witness yelled for him to stop and he ran out of the room. He fled down the hallway and into the stairwell where he went down to the first floor and escaped from the hospital. The suspect, shirtless and still wearing patches from an EKG monitor, reportedly sprinted across the parking lot and into traffic on Southern Boulevard. Video obtained by local TV stations showed deputies pointing what appeared to be either Tasers or stun guns at Scantlebury and ordering him onto the ground in the middle of the road. He surrendered and deputies took him into custody.

The nurse was transported via helicopter to another hospital where she was last listed in critical condition. Doctors said “essentially every bone in the victim’s face is broken and the victim is likely to lose the use of both eyes.”

According to cops, Scantlebury had been “acting paranoid” for the last few days and “blaming people in his life for events they had nothing to do with.” That led to authorities to take him into custody under the Baker Act.

In a statement, HCA Florida Healthcare said the attack “happened within a matter of seconds.”

“Our primary concern is with our beloved colleague and we are praying for her recovery. We are also providing support to our hospital staff who are understandably shaken by this incident,” the hospital said.

Willa Fuller, executive director of the Florida Nurses Association, also released a statement expressing concern about the safety of nurses as attacks happen across the country.

“With concern about a longstanding nursing shortage, there needs to be substantive action by ALL stakeholders to prevent this kind of egregious action. We would like to see direct care nurses included in any initiatives related to violence against healthcare workers,” she said.

Scantlebury stands accused of attempted murder and is receiving treatment at a hospital. His next court date is scheduled for Tuesday.

A 39-year-old woman in Tennessee has been arrested on a spate of felony charges for allegedly kidnapping her two biological children after beating her own mother — who is also the legal guardian of the children — so badly that the older woman was left unconscious.

Sarah Myers was taken into custody on Thursday and charged with one count of child neglect of a child under age 8, two counts of custodial interference, and one count of theft of a vehicle, all of which are felonies, authorities announced. The children, 1-year-old Rico Delk and 3-month-old Elijah Delk, were both found unharmed.

A Colorado man who was charged with beating his girlfriend to death in front of in-residence surveillance cameras has pleaded guilty but only to assault in the second degree. Prosecutors in Arapahoe County say they would have had trouble providing the original case of murder in the second degree, saying they could not prove that defendant Matthew Ivester, 38, knew his actions would have killed Stephanie Long, 36.

According to the plea agreement filed on Thursday, he is going to spend 10 years behind bars, will serve three years of parole, and must participate in domestic violence counseling.

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“After reviewing this case filing, we could not prove the defendant intended to cause her death which is why we did not charge him with first-degree murder,” Eric Ross, spokesman for the District Attorney of the 18th Judicial District, told Law&Crime in an email. “Had this case gone to trial, we also recognized there would likely be some difficulties in proving the defendant knew his conduct would result in death, which is the standard (burden of proof) for second-degree murder.”

Prosecutors dropped the murder charge as well as two counts of assault in the first degree, one count of assault in the second degree, one count of assault in the third degree, and one count of harassment.

Sheriff’s deputies previously said that Ivester, ignorant that surveillance cameras were on at home, slapped Long and put his hand on her throat on Sept. 17, 2023. She complained about her head hurting and when she tried to call 911, he took the phone from her hand and stopped her when it appeared she tried to escape out the front door, documents stated.

A man in Texas is accused of beating up and hospitalizing his elderly neighbor, allegedly using his own house key to mistakenly unlock and enter the home of the older man, whom he mistook for an intruder and attacked.

Eric Collazo was taken into custody on Monday and charged with one count of injury to an elderly person causing bodily harm, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.

Deputies with the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office at about 1:25 a.m. on March 25 responded to a call regarding a burglary in progress at a home in the 6000 block of Carriage Cape in San Antonio, Texas, according to an incident report obtained by The News Tribune. Upon arriving, however, deputies said they quickly realized that the home invasion appeared to be the result of an unlikely accident.

Deputies noted that the front door of the victim’s home had not been damaged in any way.

Deputies entered the home and found the victim — who is reportedly 79 or 80 years old — and said that he was limping, his clothing was torn, and food from a local Tex-Mex restaurant covered him and the floor of the apartment.

The victim told authorities that he was in the bathroom when he heard a knock on his door and then a tall man dressed in black — later identified as Collazo — entered the home and attacked him, pushing the victim into his bathtub and repeatedly striking him with a closed fist, San Antonio ABC affiliate KSAT reported.

The victim was transported to the hospital for treatment of his wounds, which reportedly included three broken ribs.

A 28-year-old mother from New York and her boyfriend, also 28, are facing decades behind bars after being convicted of killing the woman’s 5-year-old son, brutally beating the child with several different weapons and then leaving him to suffer for days without medical help before he eventually died.

A jury in Suffolk County on Friday found Valerie Owusu and Emmanuel Addae guilty on one count each of second-degree murder in the 2021 slaying of young King Owusu, authorities announced. The verdict came back after a two-and-a-half-week-long trial before Supreme Court Justice Steven A. Pilewski.

“This little boy was beaten and suffered for days at the hands of these defendants, one of whom was his own mother, until he unfortunately succumbed to his severe and extensive injuries,” Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney said in a statement, adding that Owusu and Addae “have been held accountable for this horrific crime.”

According to a news release from the DA’s office, Owusu and Addae used “at least four different instruments” to “brutally beat” King inside of their apartment in Lefrak City, Queens, over three days from March 30 to April 1.

Prosecutors said the evidence established that after the vicious attack on the defenseless boy, the couple watched for several days as King’s physical condition continued to get worse until he finally lost consciousness.

The man seen on video attacking an Asian woman in front of a Manhattan apartment building was sentenced on Wednesday to 15 years in a New York prison to be followed by five years of supervised release, according to CBS News. The defendant, Brandon Elliot, already spent time in jail for stabbing his mother in 2002 and was released on lifetime parole in 2019.

The survivor of the 2021 attack in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, Vilma Kari, was reportedly heading to church that day when Elliot kicked her to the ground and repeatedly stomped on her.