Suspect sent to hospital Palmyra accused has breakdown

loading...

SKOWHEGAN – A Palmyra man charged with killing a 13-year-old boy in what investigators described as a case of domestic violence was unexpectedly hospitalized, the Somerset County sheriff said Wednesday.

Todd Curry, 39, was taken to Redington-Fairview General Hospital in Skowhegan on Tuesday evening for an evaluation after a mental breakdown, said Sheriff Barry A. DeLong.

“He was not injured in jail. Apparently he had some kind of mental meltdown, so he’s going over there for an evaluation,” DeLong said.

Curry was to be transferred late Wednesday afternoon to Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta for further evaluation, according to jail personnel.

He was taken into custody after deputies and troopers arrived and found the boy’s body outside his Warren Hill Road house at 6:30 a.m. Curry was charged with murder Tuesday afternoon after being questioned at the Maine State Police barracks in Skowhegan, said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

The victim, Anthony Tucker, his mother and two other children were living at Curry’s home when the killing took place, McCausland said. The two other children were not hurt.

Tucker died of multiple gunshot wounds to the head, a spokesman for the state medical examiner’s office said Wednesday. The boy’s death was ruled a homicide.

Curry’s initial court appearance, scheduled for Wednesday morning in Somerset County Superior Court in Skowhegan, was postponed.

A new date is not expected to be set until doctors at Riverview determine whether he is competent to stand trial and participate in his own defense.

Prosecutors declined Wednesday to comment on the case.

Details about what led up to Tucker’s death were not available 26 hours after the shooting. The affidavit filed in Superior Court in support of the complaint was sealed at the request of the Maine Attorney General’s Office.

State police investigators Tuesday declined to discuss what precipitated the killing, how the boy died, or whether a weapon was recovered from the scene.

Tucker’s mother, April Cooley, 32, and Curry had been a couple for several years, McCausland said. The two remaining children, an infant fathered by Curry and Cooley’s 10-year-old daughter, were staying with their mother at the home of friends or relatives, McCausland said.

The teenager’s funeral is to be held at 4 p.m. Saturday at Maine Central Institute in Pittsfield.

A crisis team of guidance councilors and social workers was at the Somerset Valley Middle School in Hartland, where Tucker was in eighth grade, on Tuesday and Wednesday.

William Braun, the superintendent of SAD 48, described Tucker as a good student who played soccer and basketball.

“He was a leader – a quiet leader, not a boisterous leader,” he said Wednesday. “Just a good, all-around kid.”

Braun said the crisis team would be at the school throughout the week and after the service Saturday.

“They are doing pretty well,” the superintendent said Wednesday of Tucker’s 90 classmates. “It’s really pretty quiet. … We’ve tried to keep everything as normal as possible. It’s best for young adolescents if they don’t have huge changes.”

He said students were writing their thoughts and remembrances on a memorial wall in the middle school.

Curry was arrested on a domestic assault charge in January, according to Somerset County District Attorney Evert Fowle.

He pleaded guilty in March to disorderly conduct and was ordered to pay a $500 fine.

Curry had no previous criminal history except for a 1996 conviction for the misdemeanor crime of failing to pay tax or file a tax return for which he paid a $1,000 fine.

Fowle said Wednesday that he could not confirm a report that Cooley was arrested on a similar domestic assault charge in February.

On Tuesday, neighbors reported hearing gunshots coming from the direction of the home around the time the incident was first reported in a 911 call.

One neighbor, Donna True, told the Morning Sentinel in Waterville that she had complained to police in the past about gunshots coming from Curry’s home.

“They’d go investigate, and he’d say he was target practicing,” True said. “You don’t target practice after dark.”

Neighbors remembered the victim as a cheerful youngster who would wave to passers-by as he waited for the bus.

“He was very respectful, very polite,” said Laurie Holmbom, whose children had played with Tucker. “He’s someone you didn’t mind having around because he’s a good kid.”