A Maryland man has been charged with murder after confessing to fatally stabbing his grandmother at her Montgomery County home, authorities announced Monday.
Spencer Dillon Hamilton, 27, of Potomac, walked into a police station in Rockville City early on Sunday and “reported killing a family member,” the Montgomery County Department of Police said in a news release.
When first responders reported to the alleged scene of the crime, on the 12600 block of Tribunal Lane, they located a female victim unresponsive in the bathroom.
The victim, later identified as Hamilton’s grandmother, 87-year-old Pauline Yvonne Titus-Dillon, was pronounced dead at the scene despite life-saving efforts attempted by first responders, police said.
According to the charging documents, Hamilton told investigators he was “lying in wait inside the victim’s bedroom closet” in the early hours of Sunday, People reported. He then emerged from the bathroom sometime between 4 and 4:30 a.m. before attacking her.
Hamilton admitted to stabbing his grandmother in the back, punching her in the face and strangling her with his hands, the documents allege.
After the attack, he allegedly moved his grandmother’s body to the bathroom and “attempted to clean the crime scene,” according to the documents. Investigators said he fled the scene with her cellphone, laptop and credit card, NBC Washington reported.
Hamilton was charged at the Rockville City Police Station after his confession and charged with first-degree murder. He was then transported to the Central Processing Unit, where he awaits a bond hearing. He’s due back in court on April 7.
His grandmother, a retired internal medicine doctor at Howard University Hospital, is being remembered by friends as “a brilliant woman” and trailblazing professional.
She was a “great, great person,” family friend Nicole Cutts told The Washington Post. “She came up at a time when there were not a lot of women in medical schools.”
