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On the night of Thursday, January 5, 2023, April Lyda’s life changed forever & she has since been left to grapple with the kind of grief that no parent should ever have to bear. At the time of this case, April was a single mom living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, raising her three children ages three, nine & twelve.
When April headed upstairs to bed in the apartment she shared with her children, she said goodnight to her 9-year-old son, Zander & her 12-year-old daughter. That night her 3-year-old son was staying at his dad’s house so it was only herself, her daughter, Zander & their two cats inside their apartment.
Fast forward to just before midnight when April woke to the sounds of what she would later describe as the worst scream ever. After she jumped out of bed & rushed downstairs to where the sounds were coming from, she initially thought that her son was having a nightmare. Zander wanted to sleep downstairs that night & April agreed since he didn’t have school the next day.
As April ran to Zander’s side & began to move him on the couch in an attempt to wake him, she was stunned & confused when she noticed blood. While April tried to understand what was happening, Zander managed to say, She stabbed me. She couldn’t wrap her head around what was going on & who he was referring to, but by this time, Zander began to fade in & out of consciousness. April immediately called 911 & was instructed to begin chest compressions.
In the midst of the chaos & panic, April was unable to find her daughter so she continued to scream out her name, fearing that someone had come into their house while she had been asleep upstairs. She considered that her daughter had fled from the home in fear as her brother was attacked. While April waited for help to arrive, she lifted Zander’s shirt & saw puncture wounds on his chest.
By the time authorities, who had their body cams recording, rushed into the apartment in Tulsa’s St. Thomas Square neighborhood, they were met with a frantic 12-year-old girl who came rushing down the stairs, hysterically crying as she repeatedly screamed, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! The girl was taken outside & placed in handcuffs after she confessed to stabbing her 9-year-old brother, Zander Lyda, three times in the chest.
Because the girl is a minor, her name has not been released to the public. Bodycam footage depicted the girl being led from the house while April could be heard screaming & sobbing, unable to comprehend why her daughter had done what she’d done as she yelled, There’s stab wounds in the chest! You better pray to God he f–king lives.
Now standing in the front yard, the young girl told the officer that after she stabbed her brother, she ran up to her bedroom & threw the knife out the window. Shel continued to apologize over & over as she said she had no idea what happened & that it was some demonic sh-t. She walked the officer around the backside of the apartment building where he found the knife lying in the grass.
9-year-old Zander Lyda was described as one of the sweetest boys who had a huge smile, loved to ride his bike, play Fortnite & hang out with his best friends. He loved spending time with his mom & enjoyed the mundane tasks running errands together. Zander loved pizza, tacos & ice cream & he was said to be an incredible kid who wanted nothing more than to make those around him proud.
Inside the home, April watched in horror as paramedics tended to Zander, desperately trying to save his life. After he was rushed to the hospital, he was taken immediately into surgery. While April’s daughter was in the custody of the officers, she rushed to the hospital to be with her son.
Meanwhile, the girl continued to speak with officers outside & she was asked if she had any cuts on her body. She told the officer that she did & when her hoodie was removed, the officer was able to see that the majority of the cuts on her arms looked old. One wound appeared to be fresher, but it wasn’t bleeding so he helped the girl put her hoodie back on.
After she was transferred into the patrol car, she continued to insist that she was going to jail. As they sat inside the parked patrol car, she asked the officer if she would be going to jail & he told her that it was too soon to tell. She said, I ruined my life. I ruined my whole future. It’s all my fault. The officer tried to comfort her as he told her that nothing was ruined & it was nobody’s fault.
As she remained in the back of the patrol car, the girl told him a story about a time when her math teacher took a medical leave to undergo cancer treatment & when he came back to school just the day before, it made her like math that much more. The girl continued to cry & repeated softly that she was so sorry. She began to pray at one point as she whispered, I’m so sorry, God, please help me. What the f–k, Please, f–ing, please.
She told the officer that when her mom was at work, she would stay home to watch her 9-year-old brother. She explained that she also had a younger brother who turned three in October, but he spent every weekend at his dad’s house.
At one point she said that she wanted to wake up from the nightmare she was in as she continued to insist that she was going to jail since what she did was super illegal. In reference to the handcuffs around her wrists, she asked the officer, Are the handcuffs necessary? I’m a good child.
The officer explained that the handcuffs were necessary due to departmental procedures because of the nature of what she’d done. When she was eventually transferred to the police department, the handcuffs were removed & she was allowed to use the restroom.
When April first sat down with officers to discuss the horrific events of that night, she was told that Zander was breathing & the medical team was doing everything that they could. He explained that he’d just talked to the doctor & it’s all good things right now. With this news, April immediately breathed a sigh of relief as she sobbed, I don’t want to lose both my kids tonight. However, tragically, sometime after this conversation, Zander took a turn for the worse & succumbed to his injuries at 2:30 am.
Before she was made aware of the devastating news, April conveyed that she couldn’t wrap her head around why her daughter had done what she’d done to her little brother. She elaborated that she’d never been aggressive & though they argued like typical siblings, they’d never once gotten into a physical altercation. Despite the fact that the two had always been close, April had noticed that toward the very end of Zander’s life, they were fighting more than usual
April indicated that her daughter was always a happy, energetic child who loved school. Other than ADHD, she had never been diagnosed with a mental disorder, she was happy & well-behaved & had never even yelled at her mom in anger.
According to April, her kids weren’t allowed to watch scary movies, they were not allowed to swear & her daughter had never displayed any hints that she was capable of such a violent act. She admitted that her 12-year-old was beginning to rebel, but believed she was only going through normal, teenage changes.
Yet after April went to bed that night, while Zander & his sister sat on the couch together watching their favorite show, Henry Danger, she went into the kitchen & grabbed a five-inch steak knife. She walked back to the couch where Zander sat, completely unaware of the danger he was in & plunged the knife into her brother’s chest three times for no apparent reason.
There were no other warning signs of the violence to come, but after Zander’s death, April learned that two weeks earlier, her daughter had confided in friends about having the urge to stab her brother. This was something that April was never made aware of, possibly because her daughter’s friends were too afraid to speak up or potentially believed she was only joking. April had noticed that her daughter was recently spending more time in her room by herself, but figured she just wanted her own space like many teenagers want.
April later indicated that her children were always well behaved & what happened on that horrific night had to have been the result of a manic episode of some kind as she discussed the medication her daughter had taken for ADHD.
April indicated that her daughter’s ADHD wasn’t bad, but she struggled to focus at school & was prescribed a low daily dose of Intuniv, which she’d been taking for five years since she was 7-years-old. She said her daughter started having visions & hallucinations & told her that she was seeing ghosts. She told April that she saw a little girl who sat next to her in her bedroom late at night & her face was cut up & bleeding & the ghost would tell the girl that she was going to die. She also saw a woman in the mirror who wore a red coat & had no face.
There was also a morning when April’s daughter ran from her room because she thought that thousands of ants were crawling over her body despite the fact that there were no ants. According to April, because of these side effects, they eventually made the decision to take her daughter off Intuniv & she was transitioned to homeschooling.
After coming off the medication the visions stopped & she eventually went back into the public school system & asked to start taking the medication again. April took her daughter back to the doctor & he prescribed the medication once again. It wasn’t long before her daughter’s mood became angry & irritable & she started spending more time isolated in her bedroom. This was around the same time she spoke with her friends of desires to stab her brother & she also began harming herself.
April indicated that because her daughter wore long-sleeve shirts, she was unaware of the fact that she had been harming herself. When someone at school noticed, they called April & when she confronted her daughter, she confided that it made her feel better about herself. Weeks later, she stopped taking the medication for ADHD, but April went on to read that the side effects can last weeks to months.
When April spoke out for the first time in an interview with NewsNation, she indicated that it was her daughter’s medication that caused her to act out in violence. However, Dr. Kelly Posner, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, discussed the importance of separating fact from fiction. She agreed that the correct thing to do was to first consider the medical issues or medications in this case when trying to find the cause of the terrible outcome.
However, according to Dr. Posner medications don’t cause these terrible outcomes & it’s the underlying medical conditions that these medications are treating that are responsible for many things. She feels that it’s dangerous to blame the medications because when people believe these medications are dangerous, they may take themselves off them when they are potentially lifesaving.
The medication in question, Intuniv, is a non-stimulant treatment for ADHD which studies have proven to be both safe & effective. According to Posner, those with a history of self-harm or aggression may also be experiencing a mood disorder. Dr. Posner believes that it’s clear that April’s daughter was undiagnosed & suffering & like many, she was suffering in silence which resulted in her not getting the care that she desperately needed.
Dr. Darcy Sterling, a licensed clinical social worker, agrees that pieces of the puzzle are missing in this case & the medication was likely not the only factor at play as she had never heard of a situation where a child inadvertently did something like this with zero warning signs. It is her opinion that the medication alone would not make someone homicidal.
On the other hand, New York emergency medicine expert, Dr. Stuart Fischer, indicated that there is evidence that ADHD medication can contribute to behavioral changes in children & in extreme cases, can turn dangerous or pathological. April believes that her daughter’s case is one of these extreme cases.
In response to the old cuts on her daughter’s arms, April indicated that her daughter had been immediately taken off her ADHD medication at the advice of her doctor when she initially began to cut herself. She clarified that the cuts were from two months before & insisted that her daughter was not a cutter as the fresh cuts on her arm were from the night she attacked her brother. However, April had mentioned that her daughter did engage in self-harm the night before the attack, something she’d only done once before.
According to April, Zander had been awake at the time of his attack since he didn’t have school the next morning as he had been in the process of transitioning to a homeschooling program within Oklahoma. Days before his death, they met with his teacher & were waiting for his books to arrive before he could start.
April feels a tremendous guilt that she wasn’t there to protect her son since she’d always promised her children that she would never let anything like this happen to them. It was her goal that their home be a safe space where they had nothing to fear & for that, she feels she failed both her son & daughter.
Zander’s death is not the only case of violence that the family dealt with. Six years earlier, in 2017, when Zander was four & his sister was six, Zander’s father, Levi Lyda, was charged with felony animal abuse in Missouri for allegedly torturing his daughter’s kitten to death. At the time of this incident, he & April were divorced, but he was alone in her house. When she came home, she noticed drops of blood inside & Levi told her, I got rid of the cat. She eventually found the kitten’s lifeless body in the backyard.
Levi told investigators that he was extremely intoxicated after he drank a six-pack of beer & a half-bottle of vodka. He said he does not recall killing the kitten, but elaborated that after the family cat gave birth to the kitten, caring for it had become a burden on the family which is why killed the helpless family pet.
He eventually agreed to a plea deal that traded jail time for substance abuse treatment & at some point he was cited for beating a fellow inmate so severely that he sustained moderate brain injury. Levi is not the biological father to April’s 12-year-old daughter, but April told investigators that he treated her like his own when she allowed him to see her children during times when he was sober.
April said she hadn’t realized that Zander’s father was an alcoholic until eight months after they got married & they lived apart during much of their marriage until they ultimately divorced.
April gave birth to her daughter in 2010 & records show that the girl’s father is a convicted felon who is currently behind bars & has been in & out of the prison system since January of 2014. In April 2023, three months after their daughter killed Zander, he was involved in a police chase after he failed to pull over in a routine traffic stop for a defective tail light. After he crashed his car into a guard rail, he began running & officers found crystal meth in a pill bottle, a loaded syringe & a baggie with a white powdery substance inside.
The man also has ties to the white supremacist gang, Universal Aryan Brotherhood. According to April, he has not been involved in raising their daughter & owes her tens of thousands of dollars in child support. She allowed her daughter to visit him in prison a couple times when she was younger & didn’t understand the concept of what prison was.
April admits that she too had once been a hardcore drug addict, but indicates that she stopped the moment she discovered that she was pregnant with her daughter.
The 12-year-old girl was said to have grown up surrounded by felons, drug addicts & white supremacists. April remains adamant that the family’s background is not to blame as she shielded her children from these troubled men & fully believes that her ADHD medication is to blame. April indicates that she plans on suing the drug company as well as the doctor who prescribed the medication.
April’s daughter was ultimately transferred to the Family Center for Juvenile Justice, a juvenile treatment facility where she would undergo a mental evaluation with a subsequent treatment plan.
In the meantime, April was trying to put one foot in front of the other as she mourned the loss of two of her children. She coped by keeping her mind busy in order to keep the tears & panic attacks at bay. She indicated that things within their home triggered memories of the good times they once had together as she tried to grapple with what her daughter had done to her son.
April acknowledged that life without Zander seemed to make her whole world dark. She misses the jokes they came up with to tell each other, singing or playing games together.
According to April, during her daughter’s time in treatment, she’s been very well behaved & she has stood by her side, supporting her through the grief & shock of what she did to Zander. She recognizes that they both have a great deal of healing ahead of them which needs to happen before they can ever live together again as well as the fact that her daughter will require ongoing mental & emotional help.
April indicated that her 12-year-old daughter remains heartbroken & guilty & has no idea why she did what she did & voices that she feels like it wasn’t her who killed her brother.
She said that before the attack, Zander & his sister had gone Christmas shopping with their grandparents & bought presents for each other. Afterwards, she came across letters that her daughter wrote to Zander that expressed that she was excited to hang out with him. Zander had taken one of the letters & cut it into the shape of a heart & posted it to his wall.
Because of the girl’s young age, many details about the case have not been released, including the possible charges that she faces. A law in Oklahoma allows children 13 & older to be charged as adults as those under this age lack the decision-making abilities that older children possess.
It’s unclear how far the girl was from her thirteenth birthday at the time of Zander’s murder, but had she been a little older, she could have faced five years in a juvenile facility & then spent the rest of her life in prison. Because she was twelve, she will likely spend a few years in a juvenile facility before she’s released home.
If there is a trial, she could attempt an insanity defense, arguing that she was under the influence & impaired by the ADHD medication she’d been taking. However, according to Carter Jennings, an Oklahoma Criminal Defense Attorney who handles juvenile cases, she would have a low chance of success due to the fact that after she stabbed Zander, she ran upstairs & threw the knife out of the bedroom window. Because she tried to cover her tracks, this would not suggest a diminished capacity defense.
Her sentence will focus on rehabilitation & according to Jennings, these juvenile facilities are under guard & can be highly unpleasant. It’s not exactly prison, but it’s very serious & while in the facility, she may be restrained by cuffs, eat at certain times & sleep at certain times, things that are very reminiscent of prison.
Reports indicate that the facility where April’s daughter is receiving care from a team of counselors & psychiatrists, resembles a school in certain areas; it has a gym & an outdoor recreation area. At night, the children are in lockdown in rooms without bars with see-through doors. According to April, her daughter is attending school & has good grades. There are things she remembers from that night & other details that she doesn’t. She knows what she did & that because of her actions, there are consequences.
A gofundme page has been created for April to help cover expenses so she can relocate herself & her son to a new home, pay for legal fees & allow her to take a step away from work to attend weekly counseling sessions & visitations with her daughter & her care team.
Since the harrowing bodycam footage from that horrific night was released in June 2023, the case has gathered a lot of attention. April has since made a statement thanking those that have made donations while voicing her frustration that the videos have been made public, something she considers should not be legal. She discussed the ignorant, hateful comments that have since followed & admits that yes, her children have different fathers, but they were good kids & she never let that prevent her from providing for them in every way.
She argues that her children never physically harmed each other before this despite the fact that she noticed that they’d been fighting a lot more than what was normal. She describes her son’s death as a horrible tragedy that was completely unseen & unimaginable
References:
- Law & Crime: ‘I’m supportive of her & love her very much’: Mother of 12-year-old girl who admittedly killed her 9-year-old brother says her daughter ‘has been very well behaved’ in lockup
- Law & Crime: ‘I don’t know why I did it.. I’m a good child’: 12-year-old girl who allegedly stabbed her 9-year-old brother to death cries, apologizes, questions her actions in body cam footage
- NewsNation: Expert disputes medicine responsible for 9-year-old’s death
- NewsNation: Mom of 12-year-old says ‘manic episode’ to blame for stabbing
- Mamamia: ‘My 9-year-old son was stabbed to death by my 12-year-old daughter. I still love her.’
- The New Zealand Herald: Zander Lyda stabbed by sister: April Lyda’s full statement after tragic death
- Gofundme: April & her family
- New York Post: Mom of 12-year-old who fatally stabbed brother stands by her daughter despite horrific attack
- Fox2now: St. Charles man accused of killing daughter’s kitten
- Medium: 12-year-old shows remorse after stabbing her brother
- Daily Mail: Oklahoma girl, 12, who stabbed her brother to death would have been facing life in prison if she was 13 but will likely only spend a few years in a juvenile center instead
- Daily Mail: Mother of girl, 12, who stabbed her brother, nine, to death in ‘demonic’ rage pens heartbreaking 800 word defense of her ‘happy, energetic, normal, god-fearing child’ – as she vows to stand by her
- Daily Mail: Exclusive: Hallucinations & self-harm. Mom of 12-year-old ‘brother killer’ describes her daughter’s troubled life & says she has gained weight & is getting good grades as she undergoes therapy in youth facility where she lives with hardcore criminals
- Daily Mail: Exclusive: Inside the tragic life of Tulsa girl, 12, who stabbed younger brother to death: Her dad is a white supremacist hardened criminal currently locked up for drugs, her cat-torturing stepfather is an alcoholic & her mom is an ex-junkie
