Teen kills mother with pellet gun he received for ChristmasWICHITA, Kan. -- A Salina woman who died after a car crash had been shot in the heart minutes earlier with a pellet gun that her 14-year-old son had gotten as a Christmas gift from his grandfather, police said Wednesday.
Police said the teen was protecting the grandfather when he fired the air rifle Tuesday afternoon at his mother, Elizabeth White, who had a history of drug problems and run-ins with the law.
The death has been ruled a justifiable homicide, Capt. Randy Landen of the Wichita Police Department said during a news conference.
"This is a tragic situation," he said.
White, 40, had spent the weekend in Wichita after she was invited to spend Christmas at the house where her 73-year-old father and her 68-year-old mother were raising her children.
Police said the altercation happened after White returned to the home Tuesday. Armed with scissors, White threatened to kill her father, who had only a cane to defend himself. His wife grabbed a kitchen knife.
When the argument moved into the front yard, Landen said the teen's grandfather tripped over a planter.
As his mother _ still armed with scissors _ moved toward her fallen dad, police said the teenager stepped onto the front porch and aimed. He fired only one shot from about 20 feet away, striking his mother in the heart.
After throwing the scissors at her son, White took off in a car. Authorities think the wound caused her to lose control of her car, which she crashed a short time later near a Wichita middle school.
The car struck two poles, went through a fence and hit a parked sport utility vehicle before it jumped the curb and came to rest in a yard, with the engine on fire. White died later Tuesday at a Wichita hospital after undergoing emergency surgery.
State correctional and court records show that White has spent more time in prison than out over the past 16 years.
White, who got out of prison for the last time a little more than a year ago, has convictions for drug offenses, prostitution, writing bad checks and making threats.
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