Tennessee Boy Allegedly Stabs Brother, Says He’d Rather Go To Jail Than Ride In Car With Him For 8 Hours

A Tennessee boy was arrested and charged with assault after allegedly stabbing his brother because he didn’t want to spend another minute riding in the car with him, Nashville’s WTFV-TV reports.

The Clarksville, Tennessee, family was in Crestview, Florida on Saturday when the incident occurred. The sequence of events that transpired is not clear, but at some point, police were called. There, they found a 15-year-old boy with stab wounds in his arm, apparently from a small pocketknife. Police questioned the teen’s 13-year-old brother.

According to the police report, the 13-year-old said that he understood his rights, and then he told police why he allegedly did it. He told the officers that he’d rather go to jail than endure an eight-hour car ride with his brother. The boy said that his brother had been teasing him the whole way.

“I’d rather be in jail than eight hours in the car with him,” he reportedly said.

Police took the younger boy into custody and charged him with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

The older boy suffered three minor stab wounds to his upper arm, according to The Hollywood Unlocked. He was taken to a nearby hospital and treated for non-life-threatening injuries and later released.

Details about the rest of this case are rather scarce, likely because the alleged perpetrator is a juvenile. It’s unclear, for example, if he’s been charged as a juvenile or as an adult, if he’s free on bail, and when he’s due to make a court appearance.

This is not the first time someone has allegedly committed a crime in order to get away from an annoying family member.

As The New York Post reported in 2016, in September of that year a Kansas man named Lawrence John Ripple robbed a bank in order to get away from his nagging wife. Ripple simply walked into a Kansas City bank, handed the teller a note demanding money, and then took a seat in the lobby. When a security guard approached, Ripple said he was “the guy you’re looking for” and waited for police to take him downtown. There, he told police that he couldn’t stand to be around his wife any longer and preferred to go to jail.

In June 2017, according to a companion New York Post report, Ripple was sentenced to six months’ home confinement. He told the judge that he had been depressed following heart surgery when he committed the crime.