Mother allegedly strangled 8-year-old son and ran errands with body in car

Authorities in Florida said a 36-year-old woman strangled her 8-year-old son to death before she proceeded to run errands with the victim’s body in a car she was driving. Per WSVN, Shaneka Ann Mckinzie was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after she confessed to planning and killing her son.

The suspect’s son had lost consciousness when she took him to a hospital on November 14, authorities said, adding that the minor was pronounced dead. “The murder of a child by their mother, by a parent, that just exceeds imagination in many points,” Miami-Dade Police Detective Andre Martin said.

Authorities also said Mckinzie confessed she planned to take her son’s life over two days. “She decided to carry out this plan while young Jason was asleep in the rear seat of her vehicle,” Martin said. “Once he was asleep, she decided that this would be the most opportune time to murder her son, utilizing a tablecloth to both strangle and suffocate him.”

Mckinzie is being held without bond. “I believe in the arrest affidavit there is probable cause for the charge of first-degree murder,” Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Mindy S. Glazer said. “She killed her child,” Glazer added.

The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the minor’s cause of death as asphyxiation. “Our detectives are still investigating and trying to determine a possible motive, that’s something we all ask ourselves in a crime this heinous,” Martin said. “As a parent, as an investigator, this is the last case that anyone wants to hear of. The murder of a child in any situation is a tragic thing to deal with.”