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A 14-year-old teen was booked on three counts, two counts of attempted murder and one count of arson, after she tried to kill her family by setting the house on fire in Port Richey, Florida.
Taking inspiration from a fictional e-book ‘Soul Eater’, which talks about murdering people, Lily Marie Hartwell set her house ablaze at the midnight while her mother and nine-year-old brother were asleep.
The seventh grader, who studies at Chasco Middle School, used a bed sheet and towel soaked in rum and bleach to ignite the fire.
The incident occurred around 1:45 am when the girl left the burning clothes in the garage and escaped to a nearby park carrying some important items like her clothes, bottled water, cookies, knives, lighters and flashlights.
As the fire grew bigger the smoke detector alerted her two family members about the mishappening in their house.
Fortunately, both mother and her young kid miraculously escaped from the house. But when they found Lily missing they asked the fire fighters to launch hunt inside the house, which had full of fire by then. But the fire fighters returned empty handed.
Lily’s mother soon got a text message from her that read: “Mom, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I did it. Did any of you get hurt?”
Seeing the text, the mother had a sigh of relief as her daughter was safe but soon the act left her in dilemma.
The police soon traced her location in a bathroom where she was hiding inside the park and arrested her.
In her statement, the teen accepted that she ablaze her house after reading ‘Soul Eater’.
According to the police, Lily had also visited a site ‘creepypasta.com’, which is popular among fans of ‘Slender Man’, an abnormally tall fictional character.
During the initial investigations, the police found that the young girl was upset about the past incidences of bullying and was also angry by her mother’s act of disciplining her.
The cops said that the girl was highly obsessed with the fictional character Slender Man and took the drastic step getting inspiration from the fictional tale of killing people.
This is not the first time when Slender Man has been linked with such an unfortunate incident. Earlier in May this year, a 12-year old girl was stabbed as many as 19 times by her classmates just to please Slender Man.
The police also recovered the girl’s journal that depicted her obsession with the ‘Slender Man’ character. It had words like “Keep Out”. One of her post reads, “If this keeps up there will be no safety in this house.”
“There’s a clear direction. She’s involved in reading these things,” said Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco.
According to the cops, the young accused is currently held in juvenile detention. However, final course of action against her would be decided after the prosecutors take their final call on whether the minor girl will be charged as a juvenile or an adult.
The unfortunate incident is a wakeup call for the parents who need to keep a check on their child’s exposure to internet and dark fictional stories having grey and violent that can pose serious threat to the kid’ mind.
