Police in Arizona allege an 18-year-old killed his mother and tried to report her as kidnapped to cover up her death.
A jogger called police Wednesday morning after finding a woman’s body in a farm field in Sun Tan Valley, according to the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office. Less than ten minutes later, Mary Collier’s 38-year-old son called 911 to report her alleged kidnapping.
The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office said its deputies quickly confirmed the body was Collier’s.
Her son who called was identified as the suspect in her death, the sheriff’s office said. When officers arrived at the family’s home, the teen was “suffering from self-inflicted wounds” and was taken to a hospital for treatment.
Authorities have not named the teen, who was arrested Thursday on charges of first-degree murder.
His name did not appear in a search for Collier in public records, and NBC News could find no court records to determine whether he had been provided with an attorney.
Collier’s body was found by a man named James Richey, who told NBC affiliate KPNX he lived nearby. He runs daily near the field where the body was discovered.
“Even when I saw her, I was like, ‘No, this is like a Halloween prop or a prank or something,’” Richey said. “‘There’s no way this won’t happen.'”
Richey saw a broken knife with blood on it and said it then “clicked” that he had come across a crime scene, and he called 911.
Lt. Ross Teeple with the sheriff’s office told KPNX the cause of death appears to be “edge weapons” and blunt force trauma.
“We don’t have any evidence to show that an abduction actually occurred,” Teeple said. “It indicates that they went out together, both consensually, and once she got there, she was attacked and then just left in the desert.”
A GoFundMe was set up by Collier’s niece, Zel Harwell, to help pay for Collier’s funeral costs, with additional money to go to her husband and her two youngest children.
Harwell described Collier, a mother of four, as a loving woman who would call if she knew you were having a bad day.
“She gave when she had nothing, and did her best to uplift others with kind words and truth,” Harwell wrote.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
