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CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY – Wednesday morning police confirmed that a mother and child are dead in a murder-suicide. Prosecutors say the mother, Chevonne Thomas, decapitated her 2-year-old son and put his head in a freezer, before stabbing herself to death with a kitchen knife.
That little boy is identified as Zahree Thomas.
Prosecutors say the 33-year-old mother called 9-1-1 just after midnight and told them something had happened to her child.
The information they were receiving was very muddled, but it led them to believe there was a child that was in jeopardy,” said Camden County Prosecutor’s Office spokesman Jason Laughlin.
Investigators arrived on the 1400 block of Kaighn Avenue in Camden around 12:30 a.m.
Police immediately found the boy’s body on the first floor of the home. Prosecutors say the officers then noticed there was someone else upstairs and withdrew from the house because they didn’t know if the person was armed.
Prosecutors say the officers on scene then realized the person upstairs was the boy’s mother and when they went back inside they found out she had stabbed herself in the neck and died.
Her son’s head was later found in the freezer.
Chevonne wasn’t suffering from post partum depression or hearing voices, but she was smoking that PCP.
She was arrested in Nov. 2010 on a child endangerment charge after she left Zahree in a car and lost custody of the boy. Prosecutors said that during that incident Thomas allegedly admitted to smoking PCP and marijuana.
Prosecutors say the charges were dropped last October due to insufficient evidence. In April she regained custody of Zahree
