Parents: Grandma 'monster,' slain son 'vindicated'

Yahoo News ^ | March 20, 2013 | Ed White

[Uncle Chip]

PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) — Calling her mother a "monster," Jennifer Hoffman said the 75-year-old woman deserves to be in prison for fatally shooting her teen son and strongly refuted the image painted of the boy during the Detroit-area grandmother's trial.

Sandra Layne, of West Bloomfield Township, was found guilty Tuesday of second-degree murder in death of her 17-year-old grandson Jonathan Hoffman last May 18.

Jennifer Hoffman and her ex-husband, Michael Hoffman, said the verdict is "vindication" for their son whose actions and lifestyle were called into question through Layne's testimony. Layne said she bought a gun because she feared the teen and his friends after he came to live with her during his senior year in high school.

Layne fired 10 shots, striking Hoffman six times. She claimed she acted in self-defense during a violent argument, but the jury rejected that argument and found her guilty Tuesday. She also was convicted of using a gun during a felony and likely faces at least 14 years in prison.

"It's a final vindication for my son, to restore his good name and reputation, because over the course of the last nine months, it's been tarnished in a very cruel manner," Michael Hoffman said.

Jennifer Hoffman acknowledged that the teen had used drugs but said she wasn't aware of any deeper conflict between him and her mother. The Hoffmans, who are divorced, moved to Arizona from Michigan and had their hands full caring for a daughter with a brain tumor. They said Layne had offered to take in Jonathan Hoffman for his final year of school in 2011.

Jennifer Hoffman called her mother a "monster."

[madprof98]

I believe it was the divorce rather than the brain tumor that kept these unlovely folks from caring for their severely disturbed son. Grandma obviously snapped, but this was a boy whose parents betrayed him.

[angry elephant]

The parents pushed off their own responsibility for the boy on a 75 year old. It was no doubt a difficult situation for the teenager and the grandmother.

And being divorced the parents had two possible homes for the boy to live, yet apparently neither wanted him which must have hurt him deeply.

[ZULU]

Bingo

[Valpal1]

Who sends their child to live with a “monster”.

Only another monster.

[bgill]

Jonathan Hoffman was briefly hospitalized for drug use a year ago. She said he was loud, coarse and argumentative in subsequent weeks and, on the day of the shooting, had tested positive for so-called synthetic marijuana, which could have triggered a probation violation.

But, but he was a good boy who was turning his life around and was to graduate from high school!!!

[Bon mots]

Sounds to me like society benefits and must now only pay to incarcerate one of the awful two.

[Uncle Chip]

"It's a final vindication for my son, to restore his good name and reputation, because over the course of the last nine months, it's been tarnished in a very cruel manner," Michael Hoffman said.

Right -- he was hospitalized for drug use, on probation, using synthetic marijuana, antagonistic to his grandmother, shot by her, and she is convicted -- and that is a final vindication for your son.

What idiots the parents must be.