A 17-year-old boy in Michigan pleaded guilty to the premeditated murder of his half-sister after he admitted to strangling the 18-year-old girl before dumping her body.
As part of a plea deal, Savon Schmus admitted to killing his half-sister McKenna Hilton on August 18, 2016 inside their home at Lamberton Lake Apartments in northeast Grand Rapids, Michigan Live reported.
Schmus, who was 16 years old at the time of the crime, dumped Hilton’s body on Valentine Boulevard near Emerald Lake where a dog walker discovered it, authorities say. The pair lived in the apartment with their father and Hilton’s mother.
He pleaded guilty to first-degree premeditated murder on Monday in a Grand Rapids Circuit courtroom.
As part of a plea deal, Savon Schmus (left) admitted to killing his half-sister McKenna Hilton (right) on August 18, 2016 inside their home at Lamberton Lake Apartments in northeast Grand Rapids. He pleaded guilty to first-degree premeditated murder on Monday
In return for the plea, the prosecutor’s office agreed to not pursue a life sentence without the possibility of parole. The prosecution has recommended that he be sentenced to a minimum of 30 to 40 years in prison as part of the deal.
The maximum sentence he could serve behind bars is 60 years. He will be sentenced by a judge on October 30 at 2pm.
During the hearing, relatives of Schmus and Hilton gave each other dirty looks across the courtroom, as they are divided over the case, Michigan Live reported.
As the court session was adjourned, Stacey Hilton shouted, ‘Rot in Hell, Savon.’
Schmus, who was 16 years old at the time of the crime, dumped Hilton’s (above) body on Valentine Boulevard near Emerald Lake where a dog walker discovered it, authorities say. The pair lived in the apartment with their father and Hilton’s mother
The two divided families exited the courtroom and continued to exchange angry comments in the hallway.
‘It feels like the victim has been lost in all of this,’ Melissa Schneider, Hilton’s aunt, told the newspaper of Scmus’ plea deal.
‘They’re taking the rights of the criminal over the rights of the victim … There’s no closure for a lost child. It’s just the next step, but there’s no justice.’
Stacey Hilton told the newspaper: ‘If anyone deserves life in prison, it would be him. What he did was evil.
‘ It was heinous. (McKenna Hilton) is missed every day. He took our life and destroyed it.
‘If it was 100 years, we would still be grieving.’