A Florida mother has been charged with murder after her teenage daughter arrived at the family’s home in St. Petersburg and found her 4-year-old brother covered in blood, officials said Wednesday.
The 16-year-old girl told police that when she got home from school on Tuesday afternoon, she found her mother, 43-year-old Diana Elizabeth Cullom, holding the young boy, Finley, in a bed.
“There was blood at the scene and throughout the house,” officials said in a news release.
The teen girl called 911 around 3:30 p.m. Detectives told local CBS affiliate WTSP that the boy’s father was not home at the time. Cullom was reportedly the only person inside the house when the incident occurred.
The mother was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment of multiple lacerations but was released overnight, police said.
She was booked into the Pinellas County Jail in the early hours of Wednesday on a first-degree murder charge, according to a subject charge report.
Despite early reports that the boy had been stabbed to death, the medical examiner found no stab wounds on the child and determined he “had been suffocated,” police said. The blood discovered at the scene was likely from the mother, who was found to have self-inflicted stab wounds.
She also left a written note at the home, Police Chief Anthony Holloway told reporters, but did not provide additional information.