Five-year old case reopened as premeditated murder case under investigation

AMMAN — Authorities on Monday said they are questioning a man who reportedly shot and killed a child almost five years ago and at the time convinced the victim’s nine-year-old sibling to claim that he was the shooter.

Police Spokesperson Lt. Col. Amer Sartawi told The Jordan Times that police received a tip last week about the incident stating that it was in fact the victim’s cousin who is the real perpetrator and not the victim’s brother.

Upon questioning the suspect, the police official said “he confessed that he was the one who shot the child and claimed that it was accidental”.

“The suspect claimed that he was playing with the weapon when a bullet was accidentally discharged striking the victim and killing him,” Sartawi said.

Fearing that he might get a higher punishment as an adult, the police official maintained “the suspect convinced the nine-year-old boy to claim that he was the shooter”.

A senior judicial source told The Jordan Times that the Criminal Court prosecutor is currently questioning all relatives of the victim.

“We are looking at all possibilities in this case and questioning everyone who knew the suspect and the victim to learn more about this incident,” the judicial source said.

Also Monday, the judicial source said that the Criminal Court prosecutor charged a 32-year-old man with premeditated murder in connection with the alleged stabbing and shooting of his father and his pregnant stepmother in the northern Badia on Friday.

The suspect, and his brother who is being questioned by a military prosecutor, reportedly stabbed their nine-month pregnant stepmother then shot their father with a pump action gun on March 27, the judicial source said.

Sartawi had said earlier that when authorities discovered the bodies “the scene was set to make it look like a murder-suicide incident”.

However, the police official added that investigators were not convinced with the “staged scene and intensified their investigations”.

An autopsy by a team of government physicians on the suspects’ father confirmed investigators’ suspicions that it was a homicide because they pulled two bullets from his body, “which rules out the suicide theory”, said the judicial source.

“Investigators determined that the two brothers were the prime suspects in the murder and they confessed to killing the couple over domestic and financial matters,” the judicial source added.

In their initial confessions to authorities, the suspects claimed that they “first stabbed their mother-in-law and when their father arrived they then shot and killed him with the pump action gun”.

“The two then staged the scene to make it look like it was a murder-suicide incident,” according to the judicial source.

All suspects in the two incidents are currently detained at correctional and rehabilitation centres pending further investigation.