Guy Gets Out of Jail, Kills Mom 2 Days Later: Police

Family had just thrown welcome-home party for Steven Pratt
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 13, 2014 11:52 AM CDT
Guy Gets Out of Jail, Kills Mom 2 Days Later: Police
Stock image   (Shutterstock)

Thirty years ago, Gwendolyn Pratt broke up a fight between her son Steven, then 15, and his next-door neighbor inside the Pratts' Atlantic City apartment. Steven Pratt later shot the neighbor to death—and almost exactly 30 years later, police say Pratt killed his mother in her Atlantic City home less than two days after being released from prison, where he was serving time for the 1984 murder. Police arrived at the home around 6:30am yesterday to find Gwendolyn Pratt, 64, unresponsive; the prosecutor's office says she died of "massive blunt head injuries." Steven Pratt was in the home at the time and was detained and later charged with murder, the Philadelphia Daily News reports.

Police went to the home following a 911 call, though it's not clear who made it. A neighbor tells the Press of Atlantic City the family had just thrown a big welcome-home party for Steven Pratt last week, and adds that he heard that Pratt had asked to stay with a cousin after having a problem with the aunt he was staying with over the weekend. "He said, ‘Cuz, I need to live with you. Aunt CeCe, she be on me,'" the neighbor says. In the original 1984 murder of Pratt's neighbor, Michael Anderson, Pratt was tried as an adult despite claiming to have an intellectual age of less than seven due to "emotional impairments." (More murder stories.)

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