A Florida Army veteran was arrested on Sunday and charged with the murder of his mother on Mother’s Day at her Pace, Florida home. When police arrived, they found Christopher Lynch, 38, charging at them with blood all over himself wielding a long iron pipe or rod with a hook on the end of it.
Lynch came at the Santa Rosa County deputies with the steel rod and began to bash the cruiser. Officers had to repeatedly shoot him with their stun gun before he went down and was handcuffed. When the police walked up to the porch of the house, that was when they saw Lynch’s mother, Cheryl Lynch, 54, lying in a pool of blood with gashes and bruises all over her body. She was still conscious and told the police she remembered her son hitting her and then couldn’t remember anything else. She was barely understandable and her eyes were swollen shut. She died later at the hospital of her wounds.
Lynch was in the Army, training in France in 2000, when he was injured and now suffers from traumatic brain injury. When Lynch was sent home, his mother became his caretaker. Lynch remains in police custody and is charged with aggravated battery, assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest and murder. It is unknown if he is represented by council.
When the officers responded to the distress call, they heard horrendous sounds coming from the porch of the house. They knew right away that either an animal or a human was in severed distress and possibly under attack. That was when Lynch saw them and came at them.
Cheryl Lynch was so worried and so concerned with the state of her son’s mental health that she was prompted to write a lengthy letter to the House Committee on Veteran’s Affairs back in 2009. In her letter she stated that, “If something were to happen to me, who will know enough about my son’s individual difficulties and medical needs to continue to manage his care? Who would be able to put the proper supports in place for my son not to end up on the streets, institutionalized or worse?”
PHOTO CREDIT: The New Journal / The Army Times