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KKTV 11 News
By Kyla Galer |
Posted: Thu 11:23 PM, Nov 30, 2017 | Updated: Wed 5:11 AM, Dec 06, 2017
“They were so easy to love and they were so full of joy and laughter,” Melissa said, reminiscing over the children she lost.
Her family destroyed in a matter of minutes.
“It’s just more than I can bear. This is more than we can bear as a family,” Melissa said, holding back tears
The nightmare started out as a normal day. Melissa says the family was outside together in the front yard, playing football. Malik was playing too, laughing.
A few hours after bedtime, Sophia came to her parents’ room for her normal midnight bathroom run with Malik by her side, also pretty typical according to the family. But Melissa says something was off.
“I remember feeling that irritability from him,” she recalled. “You know when you look back and you think and you replay — because that’s all we do — I remember him being real annoyed, just feeling that off of him.”
Minutes later, Melissa was tucking Sophia back in.
“So I say the same things that I always say, ‘Be a good girl and go night night, Mommy loves you, see you in the morning.'”
The last words Melissa ever spoke to her daughter.
Forty minutes later, Melissa said she heard “awful, awful” sounds. She said it sounded like men fighting, grown men screaming.
Melissa’s husband Vinnie Murphy was woken up first.
“Malik met me at the top of the stairs as I was going to turn the corner to go down the stairs,” recalled Vinnie. “I was face to face with him for a split second, then I see the knife raised and come down into my neck.”
At this point, no one knew that Malik had already attacked his little brother and sister. Melissa woke up to find her husband and son fighting in the garage. With a knife sticking out of his neck, Vinnie was punching Malik and holding him down.
“It was such confusion. It’s 1 a.m. and Vinnie’s still yelling, ‘He stabbed me!’ And Vinnie is reaching around me and he is still punching Malik,” Melissa remembered.
It’s a full house. Five kids, two parents and their grandmother. One of their other sons, 14-year-old Elijah, called 911. In such a state of shock, Sophia’s grandma didn’t even realize at first what happened to the kids. And then it became all too clear.
“I heard her [the grandma] yell, ‘Sohpia’s been stabbed!’ So I run and I don’t know Sophia’s upstairs, I don’t know she’s up there, so I go running upstairs to the room and I find my Noah and he’s at the bottom,” Melissa wept as she replayed that night out loud. “He was out of bed, he was on the floor, like he was almost to the stairs, and there was so much blood. I knew he was gone. So I left him. I hated leaving him but I had to find Sophia. So I ran up the stairs and found her outside my door.”
Sophia, Noah and Malik all lived downstairs on the same floor. Elijah and Hannah were in bedrooms in the back. Melissa says she’s still amazed by Sophia’s strength that night.
“Sohpia had made it up those flight of stairs through the kitchen to my bedroom door, and all she wanted was me,” Melissa said.
A moment no parent should experience.
“Her eyes were closing, she was half gone. I could feel her half gone, and I squeezed her neck and she made this noise and went ‘ahh’ and looked at me, opened her eyes. She knew I was there and she was just looking at me … she had no fear and she had no tears, she was not scared. And I just asked her to hold onto me. Oh my gosh, and it felt like forever. I swear it felt forever before help came,” Melissa said.
While Hannah somehow slept through the chaos, Elijah stayed with his little brother Noah.
“Elijah describes how 911 made him look for heartbeats and pulses and he couldn’t find any. He’s only 14 years old,” Melissa cried.
But how did they get here? The parents pinpoint a specific day at school when Malik was 16. Melissa says he found a cell phone and instead of returning it to the lost and found, he destroyed it. School authorities eventually caught wind.
Melissa and Vinnie say when school officials searched his backpack they found a kitchen steak knife, a little bit of marijuana, and a Bic writing pen he had taken to use to smoke the marijuana out of it.
That’s when years of intensive therapy, mental hospital visits and a trial of medications started. The parents say he admitted that he had killed animals and that he had thoughts of killing his family. Malik even went as far as calling police on himself last summer.
His parents say Malik wanted to kill all of them and he said he had tried to come upstairs to do it. But even with the struggles, these parents never thought their son could go through with any of those threats. They described the entire situation as “confusing.”
“The stuff that came out of Malik’s mouth totally contradicted who he was, completely,” Melissa said.
Now the family is still grasping for answers. 11 News reporter Kyla Galer asked if they could ever forgive their son.
“Right now, that’s a very hard thing to see,” Vinnie replied.
“I’ve got so much anger and hate for my own son that I loved with every fiber in my being, so I don’t know. I don’t care,” responded Melissa.
But both parents agree that because of their strong faith, anything is possible. They say they are taking it one day at a time with the help of their church and most importantly keeping Sophia and Noah alive in their prayers.
Melissa tells 11 News she buried three children that day. They haven’t talked to Malik since, but they might try to see him in jail next week.
She says once she gains the strength she wants to use this tragic experience to fight for better mental health counseling.
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Malik Vincent Murphy, the Colorado man accused of stabbing his younger brother and sister to death as they slept, allegedly told investigators he thought about killing his family for months, according to multiple reports.
Murphy, 19, is accused of attacking his younger siblings and father with a hunting knife on Oct. 17. He has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of his brother Noah Murphy, 7, and sister 5-year-old Sophia Murphy.
He is also charged with attempted first degree murder for allegedly stabbing his father, who went to check on Sophia after hearing her screams, in the neck.
Murphy allegedly told investigators he had thought about killing his family for months. Saying it was “something that [he] had to do,” KMGH-TV reports. When asked why, Murphy allegedly replied, “to be by myself.”
During the hearing, prosecutors discussed Murphy’s alleged history of violent thoughts and mental illness, which included being treated at local psychiatric facilities multiple times, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.
Two years before the alleged October attack, Murphy allegedly hid in the bathroom of his Lincoln, Nebraska, high school with a plan to strangle the next person who came in, the Gazette reports. He never carried out his plan due to his nerves, he told investigators.
The hearing was attended by Murphy’s parents, who sat in the front row and were visible upset, according to the paper.
Murphy told police he had been diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder and depression, the Gazette reports. He allegedly admitted to not taking his medication regularly and having violent thoughts against his family.
Murphy’s next scheduled court appearance is in April. His public defender could not be reached for comment Monday.