LIVE: Matthew Lanz Murder Trial | Neighborhood home invasion case - Day 2

Описание: Matthew Lanz Murder Trial: The trial in the 2021 killing of a young Cobb County couple is due to continue Tuesday, with the accused killer set to make his case directly to the judge.

Matthew Lanz has waived his right to a jury trial and will instead undergo a bench trial. He's charged in the deaths four years ago of Justin and Amber Hicks, both 31 at the time.

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CASE BACKGROUND
Justin served as a firefighter in Cherokee County and the couple were childhood sweethearts, growing up down the street from each other. Their loss was devastating -- they were parents to a young son and beloved by their friends and family.

Making it even more difficult to process was that it appeared to lack a direct motive -- other than Lanz seemingly fixating on the house where they lived near his own parents' home, which his brother had been accused of breaking into and harassing before the Hicks family even lived there.

The case at the time weaved together several tragic and unsettling events -- Lanz, a day after the Hicks were killed in their home, was accused of stabbing a Sandy Springs officer during a home intrusion response at another house. And Lanz's brother, Austin Lanz, in August 2021 had gone to Washington, D.C. where he stabbed a Pentagon officer to death in an unprovoked attack before turning a gun on himself.

Cobb County Judge Sonja N. Brown, who will hear the case, ruled last month that Lanz was mentally competent to stand trial. That settled a years-long delay in the trial over the matter.

In the 2021 killings, the Hicks' 2-year-old son, Jacob, was at the home they'd only lived in for a couple months when his parents were found shot to death.

He was rescued by police unharmed. Lanz, according to his indictment, was charged with cruelty to children for causing "cruel and excessive physical and mental pain," to the child by leaving him "alone and unsupervised for approximately 12 hours during which Jacob Hicks was unable to feed himself, change his diaper, or get the attention of his parents."

He was also charged with tampering with evidence due to allegedly removing shell casings from the murder scene in an attempt to avoid his apprehension and prosecution, according to the indictment.

#TrueCrime #Police #trial #trialcoverage #courtroomdrama


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