A mothers warning

last updated 8 January 2015

Kingston, Jamaica

The mother of Lee Malvo, the teenage suspect in the Washington, D.C., sniper killings, said this week that she begged U.S. police to help her reclaim her son from fellow suspect John Muhammad. In a rare interview, Una James told a Jamaican TV reporter that the murders would never have happened if police in Bellingham, Wash., had listened to her. “They were to blame,” she said. “I told them that I needed help, that my son was in danger.” James also told her son that Muhammad, 42, was “a demon,” but the teen insisted on staying with him, posing as his son. Bellingham police Chief Randall Carroll denied that James warned him. “If one wants to be uncharitable,” he said, “one could say that she blamed everyone but herself.”