GUILTY MI - Jesse Miles, 69, shot to death, Niles Twp, 7 March 2010

he's being charged with first degree murder, but they havn't said what the prosecutor will ask for in penalties yet.

Fourteen is so young :(

My grandson is in the same area, and knows someone who knows the boy and my grandson was concerned about what happens when a kid is charged with first degree murder......

because he's being charged as an adult... it will depend on the prosecutor
and trial outcome.

I can't even type the worst possible.
 
What a shame.

He won't get the DP if that is your worst possible, LawRig. No one under 16 can get it in the US due to a US Supreme Court Ruling. The most severe sentence would be Life Without Parole, if they have that in Michigan and if Michigan law allows it for someone that age.
 
thank you ~ yes it was what I was worried about.

everyone is saying this was a great kid before this happened.

just makes me sick.
 
I wonder what happened? The article says the kid was just visiting - so he didn't live there, correct? Why would he shoot his grandfather? And who was the other person in the home? I wonder what they have to say about what happened?

Salem
 
I havent been able to find out any more info. so I don't know who called it in.

he was just visiting

he was by all accounts (a couple of his peers agree) a "great" kid.. they said something made him snap.

another family member was the other person who called

and no body knows why this happened, by family accounts, it was a complete and utter surprise and the grandfather was well esteemed in the family.

(this was gleaned from comments from family members following the articles and friends of the boy, not in print, discussed personally).

This is particularly scarey to the other kids because this is completely out of character for him, from what I understand.
 
Charged as an adult for his grandfather's murder

BERRIEN COUNTY, Mich. (NEWSCHANNEL 3) – A West Michigan teenager has been charged as an adult in the killing of his grandfather.

The murder took place early Sunday morning in Niles. Investigators say fourteen-year-old Dakotah Eliason shot his 69-year-old grandfather, Jesse Miles, while he slept.

Miles later died at the hospital.

Eliason's arraignment took place Monday.

Appearing by video conference, Eliason heard the charges against him. The teen has been charged with murder after police say he shot his grandfather in the head while he slept.

The grandmother reportedly called 911, and Miles was taken to a hospital in Indiana where he died.

So far, police have not released any motive for the shooting, they did say the teen often visited his grandparents.


more here

http://www.wwmt.com/articles/margin-1373544-bottom-mich.html
 
This case reminds me of the Andrew Conley case--the seventeen year old Indiana teen who "snapped" and murdered his 10 year old brother. I'm going to be very interested to see what possible mitigating factors or motive shows up here.

My mind runs wild but I think of the possibilities of sexual abuse, domestic violence, onset of mental illness, the starting or stopping of a psychotropic drug....and the availability of a gun.

Once again, I turn back to one of my favorite resources, "The Primal Teen" by Barbara Strauch. Irrefutable evidence that teens are only half-baked...literally.
 
I am sorry for the loss of the grandfather , all family involved, and that this boy felt the need to kill him. " He was a good kid" and then snapped ?
I certainly wonder if this boy was or had been molested by the grandfather at some point in his life, there is usally an underlying issue that triggers this kind of action ...moo
 
BREAKING: 14-year-old to be tried as adult
Posted 6 hours, 51 minutes ago at 1:14 pm.


Appearing before Judge Scott Schofield via satellite, Dakotah Eliason, 14, seemed aware but emotionless as he was informed that he would face charges of murder in the shooting death of his paternal grandfather, Jesse Miles, early Sunday morning.

Eliason’s parents, Steven Eliason and Mary Apfel were obviously distraught over the arraignment of their son, saying they had heard on television he would be tried as an adult.

Being advised of his rights, Schofield told Eliason, “you are being charged with murder,” as well as felony possession of a firearm, which carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison. The maximum penalty for murder is life in prison.

Schofield said Eliason would receive a court-appointed attorney and set bond at $100,000. A pre-exam conference was scheduled for Friday morning and a preliminary exam was set for Tuesday, March 16.

Michigan State Police report they received a 911 call at approximately 3 a.m. Sunday of a shooting at the Miles’ home at 3120 Niles-Buchanan Rd., in Niles Township.

According to the prosecutor’s office, there police found Miles with an apparent gunshot wound to the head. Miles was transported to the St. Joseph County Medical Center in South Bend where he later died

http://www.nilesstar.com/2010/03/08/breaking-charges-filed-against-14-year-old/
 
I am sorry for the loss of the grandfather , all family involved, and that this boy felt the need to kill him. " He was a good kid" and then snapped ?
I certainly wonder if this boy was or had been molested by the grandfather at some point in his life, there is usually an underlying issue that triggers this kind of action ...moo

I think it is a little premature to blame the victim. Plenty of youthful offenders these days are killing family members for the most trivial of reasons. Some don't even have to have a motive other than wanting to know how it feels to murder someone.

With kids killing left and right it seems for not wanting to do chores it wouldn't surprise me that the grandfather had him do a chore while he was there and the boy got ticked off about it or he may have wanted to go somewhere and his grandfather told him the forbidden word "NO."

I don't think he snapped at all and we hear so often that the youthful murder defendant was a "good kid."

imo
 
all i'll say is a lot of women who say they were battered wives kill the husband the same way, while he is sleeping
 
I noticed that the family were hunters and outdoors people. I found a man who could be a relative on MS. Typical nice seeming guy--three boys, single, hunts, fishes, extended family. Right town so possibly an uncle. So, the boy knew how to use a gun and how to access one.

But why kill your grandpa at 3 am while he slept? Coming home after curfew and an altercation? ITA, that it could be for something totally trivial. Could be. I hope not.
 
I don't know what motivated the boy to shoot his grandfather but I know for certain not all grandparents are nice.

My mother was abusive to me and my sibs and for that reason we don't let our kids spend time there without us. I'm not going to explain it all but we still see her, talk to her, help her but she was never kind, caring, loving. Now that she does not have physical strength over us she uses sarcasm, criticism, humiliation. Why do we have anything to do with her? We ask ourselves that all the time. Guilt I guess (she uses the "poor me" excuse) and fear - the fear that was instilled in us as we were growing up and being whipped with belts, locked out of the house, yanked around by our hair, slapped. Anyway the point I want to make is people in the community thought and still think she is nice. No one knows how people are at home.
 
all i'll say is a lot of women who say they were battered wives kill the husband the same way, while he is sleeping

We couldn't begin to count the victims who were totally defenseless and laying in their own beds sleeping when murdered.

It runs the gambit from men murdering their wives or entire families as they slept..to women murdering their husbands or children as they slept......to youthful offenders murdering their family members while they were sleeping.

Murderers are cowards at heart imo. Much easier to prey on someone who is totally unaware of their impending doom.

imo
 
You'll note that this town is reeling from two prior tragedies. There was a double murder, involving a school employee, which is unsolved and a "choking game" death of a student. I wonder if this murder might be related in some way to either of these events.


http://www.nilesstar.com/2010/03/09/school-officials-teen-murder-suspect-a-quiet-kid/

School officials: teen murder suspect ‘a quiet kid



"Dakotah Eliason, the 14-year-old who allegedly shot his grandfather in his Niles Township home Sunday, was not a troublemaker at school, according to principals at both Niles High School and Ring Lardner Middle School.

“He’s just a quiet kid, nice kid. He got good grades,” high school principal Jim Knoll said of the freshman.

Doug Langmeyer, the principal of Ring Lardner, said he was a student “not on my radar.”

Langmeyer said he recognized Eliason’s name when he heard the news but had to look him up in the yearbook Monday morning to match the name with a face. Both principals said they were not aware of him being involved with any extracurricular activities in school...."

more at link
 
Posted: 7:34 PM Mar 10, 2010

Dakotah Eliason’s testimony to police released
Niles Township, MI


snip.........................................................................

According to court documents, Dakotah was standing outside with his grandmother. Jesse Miles was “inside on the couch bleeding heavily,” the complaint and warrant sheet reads.

Dakotah told police “he had a lot of pent up emotions.” Before firing the gun at his grandfather’s head, Eliason went to the coat rack by the door and grabbed his grandfather’s gun. “He sat by his grandfather and argued with himself about shooting his grandfather,” the document reads.

Eliason told police he shot his grandfather, then went into his grandmother’s room, put the gun on the floor and confessed.

In an interview with the Niles Daily Star, Dakota’s mother Mary Apfel says she doesn’t know why her son did it.

“We all know he did a bad thing,” Apfel told the paper.

"This is not the loving child both of our families know,” said Apfel.

And at Niles High School, the boy who allegedly murdered his grandfather isn’t the 9th grader students and teachers knew, either.

"We had no problems with him here, he's a good student as far as I am concerned, and his records show, so, this is something that is very much out of the blue,” said Jim Knoll, principal at Niles High School

http://www.wndu.com/hometop/headlines/87284662.html
 
‘I am still his mother and he is still my son’
Posted 1 day, 13 hours ago at 10:02 am.


Editor’s note: Mary Apfel, mother of Dakotah Eliason, spoke to the Star Tuesday prior to the release of court documents to the media regarding the arrest of her son, documents she hadn’t even seen herself. Apfel had no comment to make about the information contained in those documents at press time.

When Dakotah Eliason, 14, appeared on a television screen broadcast inside a courtroom at the Berrien County South County Courthouse on Monday afternoon, Mary Apfel was a mother in visible agony.

Apfel had not seen her son since before he was taken into custody by Michigan State Police early Sunday morning for allegedly shooting his grandfather, Jesse Miles, who later died.
Eliason was booked and taken to the Berrien County Juvenile Center in St. Joseph, where he remains, charged as an adult with open murder.

In the hours following the incident at Miles’ home on Niles-Buchanan Road in Niles Township, speculation and rumors ran rampant regarding what would lead the 14-year-old boy to commit such an act.

Now his mother is speaking out with the hope the community will not rush to judge her son – though she says some already have.

“We don’t know why he did it,” Apfel said Tuesday. “There is no motive, there’s no motive. He loves his grandparents.”

In fact, Apfel said the Miles’ home was always open to her son and to her even after she and Eliason’s father Steven separated (the two were together for two years but never married).
It was inside that home at approximately 3 a.m. Sunday that tragedy would strike the Apfel-Eliason family in more ways than one.

http://www.nilesstar.com/2010/03/10/i-am-still-his-mother-and-he-is-still-my-son/
 
Dakotah Eliason

Eliason.jpg
 
i wonder what the police report isnt telling us he told them.
 

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