It was a cold January day in 2012 at house along Moores Mill Road in Bel Air. Then 16-year-old Robert Richardson decided he had enough.

While his father watched TV, lying with his back toward the teen, Richardson fired a shotgun into the back of his lone parent's head, killing him almost instantly.

Eileen Siple never thought she would ever find herself defending an admitted killer.

"He told me that sometimes, there is no other choice," she said. "You can take that however you want to take that. I know how I took that. I took that as he had no other way to be safe."

After all, Siple never knew the boy. Neither did a group of other Harford County mothers who would rally around Richardson almost immediately after his arrest.

For two years, every Saturday, Siple would visit the young man at the Harford County Detention Center learning a story of consistent physical and verbal abuse by his father.

Richardson was a battered child, his defense argued, and the murder he committed was self-defense.

Siple led the charge to tell his story and figuratively adopt the child.

There are pictures on her wall as if he is her own, a bedroom he is welcome to call his own when he gets out, and a wardrobe ready for what would have been his trial next month.

Something horrible happened in January 2012, and I'm not making excuses for him and I'm not saying this is OK. But, he needed help before then, and he needed help after then. And, he spent the last two years not getting help," Siple said.

Visit link:

Group: Adult jail no place for juveniles