Jordan Anthony Brown doesn’t mesh with his new surroundings.
He’s swimming in his jail-issued shirt, and his pant legs are cuffed six times to keep them off the floor.
He cries and is scared. He misses his dad. He wants to go back to school. He wants to go home.
Jail isn’t a place for an 11-year-old, his attorney said.
“It’s surreal, just surreal,” said New Castle attorney Dennis Elisco, who is representing the boy. “Bizarre, really.”
Jordan Brown is accused of shooting and killing 26-year-old Kenzie Houk and her unborn son Friday morning. He was charged as an adult Saturday morning with criminal homicide and criminal homicide of an unborn child and is being held in isolation at the Lawrence County Jail.
Jordan Brown is the son of Houk’s live-in boyfriend, Chris Brown. The couple lived at 1146 Wampum-New Galilee Road, New Beaver, with the boy and her two daughters. Chris Brown is the father of the child Houk carried.
“This is a typical 11-year-old. He’s crying. He’s scared. He’s worried. He’s just sitting in there alone, thinking about stuff,” Elisco said. “And I don’t believe this kid did this. I am most interested in seeing the physical evidence. The physical evidence will be shedding some light on this kid’s innocence.
No one has revealed a possible motive, but police found the shotgun in Jordan Brown’s bedroom and matching shell wadding in Houk’s body, according to court records.
Lawrence County District Attorney John Bongivengo said during a press conference at the state police barracks in New Castle on Saturday that, sometime after Chris Brown left for work and the older children left for school, Houk’s 4-year-old daughter woke up and came downstairs to watch cartoons on television and eat.
She went upstairs sometime after 9 a.m. and saw her mother lying on her side in bed, Bongivengo said. The woman had been shot once in the back of the head, Bongivengo said, and the shot had been fired from close range.