An 18-year-old Alabama woman is facing murder and burglary charges after allegedly beating her grandmother to death with a mallet — and confessing to the crime on a neighbor’s doorstep.
Jailen Mia Lupton was captured on doorbell camera sprinting to Cheryl Edwards’ home in Mobile County, frantically saying, “I killed my grandma. I need help.”
According to the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office, deputies found 70-year-old Diane Morrow Trast dead in her front yard on Beverly Road Saturday, her body covered in head trauma. The suspected murder weapon, a mallet, was found nearby.
Edwards, who lived next door, said Lupton initially lurked behind her home before rushing onto her porch in a panic. Surveillance footage shows Edwards trying to keep her out of the house — at one point using a mop to push her away. But Lupton returned, forcing her way inside.
“She said, ‘Where’s your keys? I need your car. I need to get out of here,’” Edwards told reporters. “It was horrible.” Edwards was knocked down during the struggle and suffered a bruised hip, but managed to escape.
Sheriff Paul Burch called the killing “savage” and “horrific,” noting that Trast’s injuries were entirely to the head.
Neighbors say there had been warning signs. Edwards, who considered Trast a friend, said the older woman often appeared with bruises and cuts that she blamed on the family’s pit bulls — but Edwards believed the real source was abuse within the home.
“She’d say the dogs got her,” Edwards said. “But I told her, ‘They’re going to poison you or kill you one day.’”
Authorities also seized drugs from the scene and removed 21 pit bulls from the property. Burch said Lupton appeared paranoid and possibly under the influence of meth, noting that she told others she was being chased — even though no one was around.
Animal control had been called before, Edwards said, after two of the dogs attacked her own pet. “You can only speculate why someone would have that many pit bulls,” she said.
The murder has left Edwards shaken. Just a week earlier, she and her sister were first on the scene of a fatal hit-and-run nearby.
“Two weeks in a row,” she said. “Two dead bodies. I can’t sleep.”
Lupton remains in custody and is expected to face formal arraignment later this week.
