By: | NBC17.com
Published: September 28, 2012
Published: September 28, 2012
RALEIGH, N.C. --
Our community tries to grasp for answers: after a mother's accused of killing her two year old son and then trying to take her own life.
At the Super 8 Motel on New Bern Avenue in Raleigh, police found Michelle Harpster barricaded in a room, with her son Joshua's lifeless body.
How could she? Why would she? Those questions haunt people who were in the motel when the incident took place, especially those with children themselves.
And it's even more difficult to understand, when you watch home videos that Michelle Harpster posted on Youtube over the past two years. They show a loving mother, with her little boy.
Sabra Harrington met the child. "He'd always say hey and pull on my leg or he'll play with my nephew sometimes, he was like, a real playful baby," said Harrington.
She is a young mother, who was also in the Super 8 Motel with her own one year old son, when police say Michelle Harpster killed her two year old son.
Harrington doesn't understand how a mother could hurt her child.
"It's hard being a single mom, but I love my baby. I would never try to hurt him," said Harrington.
Dr. Michael Teague is a forensic psychologist who has worked on many murder cases, including several in Raleigh in which mothers killed their children. "If a woman is going to kill someone it is going to be her child, a young child under 18, or her spouse or boyfriend," said Teague.
Teague says women rarely kill, but when they do, they're more likely to kill those closest to them. He says this crime shows a pattern of desperation and poverty.
"When people first become suicidal, then the homicidal plan comes second, and probably in her mind, oh we've suffered so much already, I'm gonna go ahead and kill you to take you away from the suffering and kill myself as well," said Teague.
I Knew this woman....she didn't come from Florida. She lived in Eden beforeshe was evicted. I believe my son still has pictures on his cell from the times we watched him(Josh).
ReplyDeleteI was shocked when I heard about it...which was earlier today..now I go over the conversations I had with her looking for a clue of something I.missed....