CNN on Oct. 14
reported that Tristen “made the chilling confession Saturday, police
said, after his mother brought him to the Pennsylvania State Police
Barracks in Honesdale, about 140 miles north of Philadelphia,” adding
that he is “being held at the Wayne County Correctional Facility and
charged as an adult with criminal homicide…The boy is separated from
adult offenders and is being constantly supervised.”
The ten-year-old, whose grandfather was Novak’s caretaker, said Novak
yelled at him when he entered her bedroom in her Tyler Hill home. He
admitted to using his fists and Novak’s cane to beat the elderly woman
as she lay in her bed, and then used the cane to press down over the
woman’s throat, cutting off her air and resulting in strangulation.
According to police, Tristen told his mother that “he got mad, lost
his temper and grabbed a cane and put it around Novak's throat.”
Detectives later said that the boy “pulled Novak down on the bed and
held the cane on her throat and then punched her numerous times.”
Tristen then went to get his grandfather, told him that Novak was
bleeding out of her mouth, but denied harming her.
Writes The Associated Press: “Police said an autopsy done Monday at
Wayne Memorial Hospital in Honesdale indicated blunt force trauma to the
victim's neck, and the death was ruled a homicide. Dr. Gary Ross also
said the boy's account to police ‘was consistent with the injuries he
observed.’”
Tristen was charged, as an adult, with single counts each of criminal
homicide and aggravated assault. Investigators have not speculated on
why the boy, a Damascus Elementary School student, snapped. According to
the police affidavit, Kurilla told interviewers that he wasn’t trying
to kill Novak, but was “only trying to hurt her.”
Martha Virbitsky, Tristen’s mother, told state troopers she “has had a
lot of trouble with Tristen and that he has some mental difficulties”
and had “been violent in the past,” the affidavit said.
Tristen remains jailed at the Wayne County Correctional Facility
without bail. He is scheduled to be arraigned on October 22. Bernie
Brown, his lawyer, said he is attempting to have Tristen removed from
jail.
“Tristen really kind of doesn't have an idea of what is going on,”
Brown said, adding that even though the boy is being held in a cordoned
off area from the inmate population, “jail is still jail, no matter what
part of the facility you are in.”
Helen Novak, a 90, dead at the hands of a ten year old: Sound off below with your thoughts.