A Florida woman has been charged with killing 2-year-old Elliana Lucas-Jamason and attempting to kill her 10-year-old brother, Ethan--two children she had co-parented with her partner of 21 years, Jacquelyn Jamason. According to WPTV, Kimberly Lucas and Jamason had broken up and though Jamason is the biological relation to the kids, the children definitely considered Lucas their other mother.
After drowning Elliana and drugging Ethan with benzodiazepine, Lucas, 40, attemped to commit suicide. She left a digital suicide note in which she blamed her former partner for the killing and also said she was inspired by a bible sermon she had heard the day before by Metropolitan Community Church pastor, Lea Brown.
Part of the sermon covered "Genesis 22," the section in which God asks Abraham to kill his son Isaac. Police say Lucas's suicide note read: "Lea's sermon really, really touched me yesterday, but God never told me to stop!" (In the Bible, God stops Abraham at the last minute, telling him to halt the killing because it was merely a test.")
Lucas's alleged suicide note also had a section aimed at her former partner: "In YOUR WORDS 'WHEN YOU ARE LAYING IN BED AT NIGHT REMEMBER YOU [expletive] DID THIS TOO YOURSELF!'"
The children's mother is said to be devastated, Lucas is being detained in Palm Beach County jail (bail was denied), and local members of MCC, the international LGBT-affirming Christian church, are bewildered and grieving.
Pastor Brown told reporters at
WPTV that, "The message of that sermon was the message of every sermon we have here, which is about the redemption and the healing that we can find in God's love even in the face of things we don't understand. And that's what the message was and whatever happened in her mind, only God knows."
Elliana's stepbrother Parker Gazo has set up a memorial fund in the toddler's name. Click here for information.