A Virginia woman was sentenced to serve 18 years for first-degree murder and use of a firearm after she fatally shot her mother then sent a picture of the body to her father after he said he didn't believe her and dismissed her confession as a prank.
The incident occurred two years ago on Black Friday of 2013 while Rachel Hutson, who was 19 at the time, was at home with her mother, reported the New York Post. During a court hearing, she admitted to the crime, saying at first that she had planned to kill herself but decided against it since she didn't want her mother to find the body.
Instead, she decided to shoot her terminally ill mother. She recalled that when she first aimed the shotgun at her mother, the bedridden woman thought Hutson wasn't serious and warned her that she would be in trouble when her father, who was out shopping at the time, got home. Proving it wasn't a joke, Hutson shot and killed her mother.
Sometime later, her father, Donald, called the house to talk to his wife, but Rachel picked up instead. Rachel told her father what had transpired but he wrote it off as a prank and hung up. That was when Rachel sent a picture of her mother's body to his phone, giving him little choice but to believe her, according to the Virginian-Pilot.
"That's when I realized this is probably real," Donald testified in court on Nov. 10.
After the receiving the photo, Donald was unable to call police for 90 minutes because she threatened to kill herself, reported the Mirror. He calmed her down and contacted police who later arrived on the scene and arrested her.
Speaking in court, Rachel, now 21, said the murder was more of an afterthought since she had initially intended to kill herself due to ongoing depression.
"I felt like I was just nothing, and nobody really needed us," she admitted.
