A 60-year-old Missouri man and his daughter was killed in their St. Louis home Thursday, according to police.
Both 3-year-old Octavia Williams and Tommy Williams were killed in their four-unit apartment building.
55-year-old Henry Hughes, who lived in the unit downstairs from the family, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder Friday in their deaths. He is accused of shooting Williams in the basement of the apartment building in the 5100 block of Pennsylvania Avenue before going upstairs to the family’s apartment and strangling Octavia, police allege in court records.
Hughes was arrested early Friday in Williams’ car and admitted to following Williams into the basement, shooting him in the back and taking money and car keys from his pockets, St. Louis police wrote in court documents. Hughes also admitted under questioning to strangling the 3-year-old before taking several items from the family’s apartment, court records say. Court records did not indicate a motive in the killings.
“I honestly have no words. I really don’t believe it’s real, but it is,” Breiner said Monday. “To murder my mom’s fiance and my 3-year-old sister is the worst thing I can possibly think of. Who would kill a child?”
Breiner said Williams was a devoted father to Octavia and a “kind-hearted, gentleman” who had been in a relationship with her mother, Woolson, for several years.
Breiner said she and her kids video-chatted with Octavia nearly every day.
“She would be playing with her toys or helping my mom bake cookies, just being a kid,” Breiner said. “She would always look at my 2-year-old daughter and go: ‘Aw baby!’ then run to tell my mom about the baby.”
Breiner said her family remains devastated and has set up a GoFundMe fundraiser to raise money for funeral costs and, potentially, to find her mother a new place to live away from the crime scene.
The man charged in the killings has several felony convictions. From 1989 through 1990, he was convicted of three counts of burglary, one count of forcible rape, one count of sodomy and one assault.
He is unemployed but has worked in food service in the past, according to court records.
St. Louis Judge Theresa Burke denied Hughes bond Saturday and he remained in custody at the St. Louis Justice Center.
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