Tacoma man charged with fatally stabbing mom said he was tired of being yelled at
Fed up with being yelled at, a Tacoma man told police he attacked and killed his mother with two knives as soon as she walked in the front door.
On Wednesday, Pierce County prosecutors charged Learry Suong, 30, with first-degree murder.
He pleaded not guilty at arraignment. Superior Court Commissioner Craig Adams set bail at $1 million.
The Medical Examiner’s Office has not yet identified the 61-year-old victim.
Police were called to Suong’s apartment in the 1800 block of South 82nd Street just before 4 p.m. Tuesday by a neighbor who was alarmed by a bloodcurdling scream.
Neighbors told officers it was common to hear Suong’s mother shouting at him, but they hadn’t heard any fighting that afternoon.
Charging papers give this account:
Police did not get a response when they knocked on Suong’s apartment door but found the door unlocked.
A woman was found lying on a blood-soaked floor with a knife nearby.
Paramedics responded and pronounced the woman dead.
As officers were speaking to neighbors in the building, Suong approached them in bloodied clothing and was taken into custody.
“It was clear to the arresting detective that the defendant has some mental illness or delay,” records say.
Detectives questioned Suong, who allegedly claimed he had to kill his mother before she killed him.
“... the defendant told police that he decided he was not going to allow his mother to yell at him that day, so he got a knife and sat on the couch waiting for her to come home,” prosecutors wrote in charging papers. “When she came home, she started to yell at him, so he attacked her with the knife.”
Suong claimed he used two knives in the attack.
A second knife was found in the kitchen sink.
Although it appeared to have been washed, it still had the victim’s hair on the blade.
Suong’s mother was still wearing her backpack and holding her car keys, indicating she was repeatedly stabbed in the face, neck and head almost immediately after entering the apartment she shared with her son.
Suong has five prior felony convictions.
In 2010, Suong was accused of choking his mother and punching her boyfriend when he tried to intervene. He pleaded guilty to third-degree assault and was sentenced to just over a year in prison.
Charging papers in that case alleged that Suong threatened to kill his mother if she called police and at one point told her to get on her knees and pray for her life.
“She was unhappy the defendant was staying with her,” the declaration for determination of probable cause said. “She went to the store earlier because she feared being at home with him. When she returned, the defendant asked her to turn on the T.V. As she approached the T.V., the defendant grabbed her hair and violently threw her to the ground.”
Then he stood her up and choked her, the charging papers alleged.
Suong denied choking his mother, and said in his plea paperwork that he hit the boyfriend in self-defense.
The mother got a restraining order against Suong following the assault.
“He is very angry,” she wrote. “I am very scared for my family ... .”
She described the assault in her petition, as well as a time in 2002 that Suong pulled off her bracelet while holding a knife, and she asked a neighbor to call police.
She also wrote about a time in 2006 that she tried to get him help and he was upset a counselor had come to the house to “teach (him) about behaving.” He walked toward his mother, and, as she backed away from him, she fell and hit her head, the petition said. A neighbor allegedly called police that time, too, and Suong left.
A few years later the mother found Suong choking his nephew, and the nephew’s father called police, the petition alleged.
Neighbors in the Bryn-Mar Village apartments said Suong’s mom was friendly, but he was regarded as something of a troublemaker.
“She was a very nice lady,” neighbor Je’hauri George told KIRO-TV. “Every time I saw her she had a smile.”
This story was originally published March 11, 2020 at 12:28 PM.
