Confession: Boy bludgeoned sleeping mom over PlayStation | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/15/2011
When her 16-year-old son got into trouble last November, Rashida Anderson responded with punishment - she took away Kendall's PlayStation.
That proved fatal.
Following a 90-minute argument the day after Thanksgiving, police allege, Kendall went into his sleeping mother's bedroom, hit her 20 times with a claw hammer and ultimately killed her.
The story of Rashida Anderson's bloody end - as told by her son in his confession to Philadelphia police homicide Det. Thorsten Lucke - was read to a Philadelphia Municipal Court judge, who ordered the lanky youth to stand trial for murder, possession of an instrument of crime and abuse of corpse.
Anderson, a lanky 5-foot-8 youth dressed in a blue striped polo shirt and slacks, looked quizzically about the courtroom as Lucke read his confession during the preliminary hearing before Judge Karen Yvette Simmons.
According to Anderson's statement, the 11th grader at Daniel Boone School in North Philadelphia paced for about three hours in his South Philadelphia home trying to decide if he should kill his mother.
"I couldn't stand the arguing," Lucke said, reading the youth's statement.
When the hammer attack did not kill her, Anderson told police, he dragged her downstairs and tried to "cremate her" in the kitchen oven. When that failed, he continued, he beat her in the head with a chair leg before dragging her body outside and hiding under debris in an alley behind the house.
Lucke said that Anderson expressed remorse for the crime and told him: "If I could, I would not do it again. I really miss my mom . . . she was the only person who cared for me."
