By JORDAN OWEN
Chicago Sun-Times Wire
Andre Brown | Chicago Police
When Andre Brown and his mother, Damita Collins, got into an argument about his not having a girlfriend last year at their Ashburn home, he ended up stabbing her to death, according to Cook County prosecutors. And for that, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Brown was found guilty of murder on May 27 after a bench trial before Judge Matthew Coghlan, according to Cook County court records.
On Jan. 5, 2015, he stabbed the 54-year-old Collins in the chest, then slit her throat in the home they shared in the 3500 block of West 77th Place on Jan. 5, 2015, authorities said at the time.
Collins was administrator of the Trumbull Park Head Start Program at Ada S. McKinley School.
Collins’ husband was in the basement eating dinner and watching the Bulls game about 9 p.m. when he heard several loud noises upstairs, prosecutors said. He went upstairs and found his bedroom door locked, but before he could open it with the key, Brown yanked the door open and forced his way out.
Damita Collins | photo provided
He then found his wife lying on the floor in a pool of blood. He called 911 and tried to help her, but she died at the scene, authorities said.
The man then chased Brown, his stepson, but the younger man ran out of the house and drove off in his mother’s car, prosecutors said.
Investigators found a defensive wound on Collins’ thumb and a bloody knife in a butcher block in the kitchen, prosecutors said. Brown, who was 26 at the time, was arrested the following day.
He gave a videotaped statement to detectives admitting to killing his mother during an argument because she kept “putting him down and telling him that he needed to get a girlfriend,” prosecutors said.
Judge Coghlan sentenced Brown to 30 years in prison Wednesday, according to court records. He will receive credit for 541 days served in the Cook County Jail, and must serve three years of supervised release.