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Police: North Carolina Woman Stabbed And Scalded Her Sleeping Mother To Death

By Chelsea Hoffman
Published on: 07:03 PST, Aug 18, 2016

A North Carolina woman has been arrested after authorities say she violently attacked her mother as she slept. CBS News reports that 20-year-old Milina Tapo Harris has been charged in association with the horrifying incident that left her 47-year-old mom dead.

The fatal incident reportedly took place on early Wednesday morning. Police in Greenville say that they were called to a residence at a little after 2:30 a.m., to discover that a violent assault had taken place. They say that the 20-year-old North Carolina woman doused her sleeping mother with boiling water, which badly scalded her. The woman is also accused of stabbing her mother numerous times.

The 47-year-old woman died from her injuries in the hospital, after being transported from the scene of the alleged crime. At this time, a motive isn’t known in the case — nor is much even known about the 20-year-old woman accused in the horrifying incident. What led Milina Tapo Harris to both scald and stab her mother to death?

This is, sadly, not the first time a case of matricide has made media headlines. Earlier this year a reportedly “mentally ill woman” strangled her 78-year-old mother to death with a scarf. The reported reason was that the woman thought that her mother “looked like a witch.” The British woman ended up sentenced to life in prison.

Also this year, a Maryland woman has been accused of stabbing her mother to death at a shopping mall. The woman, who had been diagnosed as bipolar, stabbed her mother in the parking lot of the mall several times, ending in the death of the 60-year-old woman.

In another 2016 case, a 15-year-old New York girl reportedly admitted to authorities that she not only her own mother but her mother’s boyfriend. Initially, she claimed to be the victim of abuse, but she later recanted those claims and admitted that she was lying.

A famous case from the 1990s involved teenage girl Gina Grant, who at age 13 killed her own mother. The South Carolina teen bashed her mother in the head over a dozen times with a heavy crystal candlestick. She also stabbed a carving knife into the older woman’s neck in what she thought was an attempt at making her death look like a suicide. Gina gained notoriety not only for the murder but again years later when she was granted admission to Harvard University. However, she had omitted her shady past in college applications, and that invitation from Harvard was retracted.

As for this latest case, police say that they don’t know why the North Carolina woman murdered her mother. She has appeared before a judge since Wednesday morning’s horrific slaying of the older woman, to see that previous charges against her have been upgraded. While she was initially charged with attempted first-degree murder, she is now facing a murder charge since her mother succumbed to her injuries while in the hospital.

Hopefully, in time, a motive and more information will be released by authorities in this shocking case of matricide.

[Image via Pitt County Sheriff]

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