POLK COUNTY, Fla. – A 17-year-old boy is accused of stabbing and killing his mother months after he shot and killed his father, according to the Polk County sheriff.
Collin Griffith, 17, was arrested near Auburndale in the stabbing death of his mother, Catherine Griffith, 39.
According to Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, the teen called 911 around 6 p.m. on Sept. 8 and said his mother fell on a knife during an argument.
He told the 911 dispatch that his mother lunged at him with a knife during their fight and fell on it, stabbing her in the neck.
“Our investigation clearly and unequivocally shows that that circumstance did not occur like that. In fact, he used similar language to when he made the 911 call what, 18 or 20 months earlier, when he shot and killed his father. It’s important to understand when you look at this, you see a kid. When I look at him, I see a psychopath,” Judd said during a news conference on Wednesday.
The sheriff said Griffith has a history of violence and mental illness.
Witnesses told detectives they saw the two arguing outside the home, which belonged to the boy’s grandmother, when at one point, the 17-year-old grabbed his mother by the hair and dragged her inside the home. The boy’s mother pleaded with him, saying “let me go” repeatedly, witnesses told the sheriff’s office.
Griffith’s grandmother, who was not home at the time, told detectives he had been “physically or verbally confrontational” with his mother in the past, according to a release. In November 2023, he was charged with domestic violence battery by the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office.
“The reason he battered his mother is because she was disciplining him and took his video game privileges away. So he beat up his mother, he pushed her to the ground, and he stomped on her. The grandmother was there and witnessed this. Collin said it was self-defense,” the sheriff said.
She also told deputies he had been arrested in February 2023 in Oklahoma in the shooting death of his father but charges were later dropped when he claimed self-defense.
“He shot him once in the chest and once in the head, and he claimed self-defense. The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations charged Collin with murder in the first degree. They dropped the charges less than a month later. They said they could not disprove Collin’s assertion of self-defense, so he was released,” Judd said.
The sheriff described Griffith as a “dangerous human being.”
“The unfortunate thing was now he’s killed two people and killed his mother and father, and I can assure you, beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt based upon his conduct, had he gone to live with his grandmother at the end of this and she crossed him, she would be next. He’s violent. He’s dangerous. He showed zero remorse, zero remorse when he was being interviewed,” he said.
Griffith faces charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and a violation of a no-contact order.
To watch the sheriff’s news conference in its entirety, click here.
Get today’s headlines in minutes with Your Florida Daily: