The heartbroken Pennsylvania mother of the 11-year-old boy accused of executing his adoptive father because his Nintendo Switch was taken away on his birthday recalled the harrowing night her husband was murdered.
“I’ve lost both my husband and my son. I cannot even wrap my head around it,” Jillian Dietz told The US Sun. “I will say this. My husband was the most amazing, incredible man. We were together for 11 years.”
Jillian Dietz was in bed with her 42-year-old husband, Douglas, inside their Duncannon, Pa. home in the early morning of Jan. 13, when she was woken to the sound of her son, Clayton, allegedly killing her husband.
She attempted to wake up her husband, who wasn’t budging when she began to hear the sound of water dripping on the ground, which turned out to be Douglas’ blood soaking through the bedding, she previously told police.
The couple had adopted Clayton in 2018. He allegedly admitted to killing his father after police arrived at the home around 3:20 a.m.
“Daddy’s dead,” the preteen screamed before telling his mother, “I killed Daddy,” according to court records.
Jillian Dietz told police she had slept through the horrifying shooting, only being woken up by a loud noise and the smell of what she initially thought was fireworks.
The family had celebrated Clayton’s birthday the previous day, sung “Happy Birthday” to him and eaten cake before Jillian headed to bed just after midnight.
The boy had told police he had a “good day” with his parents but got mad after Douglas told him it was bedtime and took the Nintendo gaming console away from Clayton and locked it inside his gun safe.
The 11-year-old revealed he snuck around the house in the middle of the night, took the gun safe key from his father’s drawer, opened the safe and took the Switch and his father’s unloaded revolver.
In a split-second decision, Clayton admitted to “removing the gun from the safe, loading bullets into it and walking over to his father’s side of the bed” before “he pulled back the hammer and fired the gun at his father,” the affidavit stated.
He described being blinded by anger and told police he “had not thought about” what would happen after he fired the gun.
The young alleged killer was charged as an adult with criminal homicide in the shooting death of his father.
The baby-faced boy appeared at the Perry County Courthouse on Feb. 19, surrounded by probation officers.
Friends of Dietz remembered Douglas as a “sweet soul” taken in a tragedy.
“Her husband may be gone, but her son is still here, and she loves him very much despite everything. He’s a child,” Dietz’s best friend, Raechal Stepp, said, according to the outlet.
“All I can really say is Doug was a sweet soul. I didn’t know him as well as I would have liked to, but I do know that he loved my best friend with all his heart,” she said. “He was always very hard working, funny, and very laid back.”
Stepp described Douglas’ love for his wife as “unconditional” and was a great dad to their son.
Besides Clayton, Douglas was the father of older children with an ex-wife.
