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The mother of the Oklahoma girl who fatally stabbed her younger brother to death earlier this year in a “demonic” rage has stood by her daughter despite the brutal attack.
Heartbroken mother April Lyda shared an update about the family this week after her 12-year-old daughter, whose name has not been released publicly, stabbed her brother, Zander, 9, in the chest on Jan. 5 at the family’s home in Tulsa’s St. Thomas Square neighborhood.
“She has been very well behaved the entire 6 months she has been gone [living with other family members] and yes I’m very supportive of her and love her very much,” the grieving mom said of her daughter’s progress since the tragedy.
“Obviously there is a lot of healing that we both need before we can ever live together again and she needs mental & emotional help after this, she could have permanent damage, we don’t know yet,” Lyda wrote on a GoFundMe page.
The siblings “loved each other and always got along until the very end,” she said.
“They never physically hurt each other on purpose, that just wasn’t who they were,” she added, noting that her daughter “never had behavioral issues” before the attack.
Lyda admitted, however, that the girl was “put back on a medication she was off for over a year” shortly before the incident.
The mother declined to disclose the type of medication her daughter was taking, but said they were not for psychiatric purposes.
She said her daughter was taken off the medication again when she started cutting herself, but “it was too late, the damage was done.”
Lyda’s updated statement on the fundraiser page — which had raised more than $10,000 of its $15,000 goal — came shortly after authorities released edited bodycam footage from the night of the attack. In the harrowing footage, the 12-year-old can be seen sputtering “I’m so sorry!” repeatedly and telling police that she was overwhelmed by “demonic s–t.”
Zander was pronounced dead at 2:30 a.m.
“I felt like I failed him and her both,” Lyda wrote of her reaction to her son’s killing, adding that she did not think it was “legal or appropriate” for police to share the footage.
“Anyway with all that said, don’t believe everything you see or hear on the internet or from strangers that have never met me or my family. I still have my rights, if I was negligent in anyway I doubt I would still have rights over both my surviving children,” she said.
Because of the perpetrator’s age, the Tulsa District Attorney’s Office could not disclose any information about the case, including what charges the girl faces.
Zander’s death is not the family’s only brush with serious violence: In 2017, the boy’s father, Levi Lyda, was charged with felony animal abuse in Missouri for allegedly torturing his daughter’s kitten to death, FOX2 reported.
Levi told investigators that he was extremely drunk and killed the cat because he thought it was a burden on the family, the outlet said.
Though he eventually agreed to a plea deal that traded jail time for substance abuse treatment, Levi was cited for beating a fellow inmate so severely that they sustained a “moderate brain injury,” the Daily Mail reported.
Levi is not the 12-year-old’s biological father, but April told investigators he treated her like “his own.”
“She is with Zander’s dad and grandma all the time they look at her like she’s their [daughter and] granddaughter too,” the distraught mom explained.
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