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“I told her it wasn’t dinner time. It tipped me over the edge. She gave me more attitude.
A Michigan man charged in the gruesome death of his 5-year-old stepdaughter flew into a rage after the child said she wanted something to eat because “it wasn’t dinner time,” it was revealed Thursday.
Thomas McClellan, 25, of Holt – who police say admitted to stabbing Luna Michelle Younger and setting her lifeless body on fire inside their home last year – had detailed what made him snap to a detective after his arrest.
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The recording of that interview was played Thursday during McClellan’s murder trial in the 55th District Court of Ingham County, according to the Lansing State Journal.
“What was so awful about Luna today that you had to kill her?” Detective Chuck Buckland of the Ingham County Sheriff’s Office asked McClellan during the questioning.
A long silence ensued, prompting Buckland to say: “I don’t wanna guess something, Tom. I wanna hear it from you…What’d she do, Tom?”
McClellan finally responded: “I told her it wasn’t dinner time.”
During the interview, McClellan told the detective how a short time before the Nov. 1, 2016, slaying, he spent part of the day arguing with Luna’s mother, Victoria King, whom he married three months prior.
McClellan said he was at the family’s Keller Road home with Luna while King was at work when Luna knocked on his bedroom door at around 5 p.m., waking him up from a nap.
The girl told her stepfather that she was hungry, said McClellan, who added that he tried to get Luna out of the room, even pushing her a little, but she planted herself down on the floor.
“It tipped me over the edge,” McClellan said in the recording, according to the news outlet. “She gave me more attitude.”
McClellan admitted that he knocked Luna to the ground, sat on her hips and stabbed her in the chest multiple times with a pocket knife, killing her.
“What’d she do when you stabbed her,” Buckland asked.
“She cried, and she coughed,” McClellan responded. “Not very long.”
Cops say McClellan then wrapped the girl’s lifeless body in blankets, dumped alcohol on it and lit it on fire.
McClellan is charged with murder, first-degree child abuse and first-degree arson and faces up to life in prison if convicted.