14-year old Detroit boy shoots mother to death with shotgun

Joshua Smith, age 14

14-year old Joshua Smith had been having a difficult time with his mother lately.  His mother, Tamiko Robinson, wouldn't let Joshua have girls over or hang with his friends, who were apparently affiliated with a gang.  Joshua had also run away from home for a few days, recently.

One night, while Robinson slept and, in another room, Robinson's fiance, Chiko Lewis and the couple's 5-year old daughter slept, Joshua took Lewis' shotgun and shot his mother to death.

Lewis and the 5-year old escaped.

Joshua was captured soon afterward.

(related articles HERE and HERE)

"He just wanted to hang with the thugs," [Tamiko's brother] Roberts said, sitting on the front porch of the home on Burns, just off Gratiot Avenue, as he was holding a family picture of them. "The first thing that came to mind was he did it because of what they were going through."

Roberts said the boy, who is on the swim team and ROTC at Kettering High School, broke into an office in the home to get a gun owned by his mother's fiance.

Every gun in the hand of a child must first pass through the hand of an adult.