FORT PIERCE, Fla. (TCN) — A 41-year-old mother is in custody on suspicion of killing her young son while trying to “exorcise demons” from his body.
According to St. Lucie County Sheriff Richard Del Toro Jr., on the morning of May 30, school resource deputies requested a welfare check for a student, 6-year-old Ra’Myl Pierre, who had been absent since May 14. An arriving deputy made contact with Pierre’s mother, Rhonda Paulynice.
Per an arrest report, the responding deputy noted that the mother was “behaving ‘oddly’ and would not remove her sunglasses and appeared completely indifferent to the deputy’s presence.”
Paulynice reportedly escorted the official to the child’s bedroom, where he was found deceased on his bed and wrapped in fabric with only his face exposed. Other detectives subsequently responded to the scene, and an investigation ensued.
The arrest report alleges that the child’s body was covered “to possibly conceal evidence of trauma.”
According to Del Toro, Paulynice last spoke to her son on May 18. She allegedly believed God told her to “exorcise demons out of the child’s body.” After Pierre’s death, the sheriff said Paulynice “felt the child had been released of those demons and was waiting for him to come back.”
A preliminary autopsy does “not refute the mother’s account of the events surrounding” her son’s death. However, as of June 3, the victim’s autopsy results are not final. Investigators suspect Pierre had been deceased since May 18.
Paulynice faces charges of second-degree murder, failing to report a death, and altering a body after it was deceased. She remains held in the St. Lucie County Jail.
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