Indiana teen beat her father to death with a hammer for 'fat-shaming' her
An Indiana teen was charged with bludgeoning and stabbing her father to death during an argument over what law enforcement described as "life issues."
Eighteen-year-old Ameera Stokes was arrested after she called 911 in the early morning of Mother's Day, and told operators that her father, Donald Stokes, was dead.
According to the deceased's ex-wife, Stokes would frequently fat-shame Ameera, whom she described as suicidal and suffering from depression.
According to Daily Mail, the tragic incident took place after Ameera recently arrived to Mount Morris Township, Machina to stay with her father.
The teen has a history of depression and had attempted suicide multiple times earlier. She had moved to her father's house after her last attempt at suicide.
At around 5:30 am last Sunday, the emergency operators at 911 received a call from Ameera who said her father was dead.
Officers who immediately arrived at the victim's home on the 1000 Block of West Genesee Street found the 53-year-old man's body, bloodied and battered, lying on the stairwell leading to the basement.
Mount Morris Township Police Department's Chief Terence Green told Mlive.com that Ameera and her father got into a serious argument about "life issues" which later turned abusive and violent, eventually leading to Stokes' bloody death.
Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton said the girl assaulted her father's head with a hammer. The man was laying on the mattress and later Ameera repeatedly stabbed him, which eventually killed him.
Ameera was put on trail on a single count for first-degree murder, and is next due in court on May 24.
Speaking to ABC12 , Gretchen Brasher, Ameera's mother said her daughter was kind and artistic but had a terrible childhood because of financial troubles and emotional abuse.
Brasher, who re-married in 2015, said that they did not have the means to support Ameera and her sister when they were children, so she sent the girls to live with her biological father Donald in Michigan.
"He was very verbally abusive. She had a belly, so he would tease her about being fat," she said. "He would like let her have an apple for dessert, while everybody else was having something better."
Not long after Ameera came to live with Donald, Brasher had a car accident in which she was injured; later she got addicted to her painkiller medication which eventually led to her imprisonment.
While Brasher was in prison, Ameera, then all of 13 years, had stabbed a friend at an after-school program.
She was sent to a rehabilitation program from which she got out in February 2017.
After her release, Ameera was living with her mother in Muncie, Indiana. Over the past year, according to Brasher, she was mentally ill and had attempted suicide half a dozen times.
Brasher’s husband posted a lengthy status update on Facebook this week, saying that Ameera’s most recent suicide attempt took place on February 12, when the girl took his car and drove it into a pole at 70mph.
Ameera was later admitted to a mental health facility but checked herself out just over a month ago, and a few weeks later made her way to Michigan to stay with her father.
Brasher revealed that her daughter told her that she had run out of her medication just a couple of days before the deadly incident.
A couple of months earlier, Brasher said Ameera began talking about how she wanted to go to prison so she could have a roof over her head without being a burden to anyone.