"He is not a monster," says his mother after his 14-year-old son, accused of the death of younger brothers and sisters.

An older relative was detained in connection with the death of Nathaniel Ritz, 11 months, and Desiree McCartney, 23 months, according to the authorities.

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A 14-year-old boy from Indiana was detained in a juvenile detention center after confessing the suffocation death of two younger siblings, the authorities said.

The first child, a 23-month-old girl named Désirée, died in May, five days after being hospitalized for "not breathing properly," her mother, Christina McCartney, told FOX 19 in Cincinnati.

A few months later, 11-month-old McCartney's son-in-law, Nathaniel Ritz, died after being suffocated, the report said.

Shortly after the boy's death, the 14-year-old's brother confessed to killing them, according to authorities in Ripley County, Indonesia.

But McCartney defended the teenager.

"It's not the monster that people are trying to describe like it," she told the station, "It's the worst nightmare of a mother to have a family." so precious and wake up to the worst possible results. "

"It's the mother's worst nightmare to have such a precious family and wake up to the worst possible results."

– Christina McCartney, mother of a suspected teenager and children killed

The teenager told the investigators that he had killed the children so that they "do not live in hell," say prosecutors, although the meaning of the words of the l '39, teenager is not clear.

Ripley County Attorney Richard Hertel said Wednesday that the teenager was arrested last week on charges of murder in the family's home in Osgood, a rural community about 100 kilometers south of Indianapolis. .

In an affidavit of probable cause, the authorities said that the teenager, who was 13 at the time of death, told investigators that he had used a towel to choke his half-sister and a blanket to kill his half-brother.

Hertel said that the teenager was informed of the charges against him on Monday after which the judge said that he would decide if the teenager was competent to judge before deciding whether to grant it or not. not the prosecutor's request to be tried as an adult. .

The boy was charged as a result of a state police investigation, according to which Mr. Hertel was on going.

According to the affidavit, the teenager told investigators who had questioned him about the deaths of his siblings that he "had had a conversation with God about them, but that" He could not talk about it because he had promised God that he would not tell anyone. "

In another interrogation, the teenager began to "talk about saving Desiree and Nathaniel from hell and chains of fire". He then added that "he did not want them to live in hell," before describing how he had choked the kids.

When asked what this "hell" was, the boy responded "chores," before asking investigators when they had seen the list of daily tasks that he had to accomplish, says l & # 39; affidavit.

According to the affidavit, the teenage grandmother told the investigators that when she asked him why he had killed his siblings, he had replied that "he did not did not want them to be treated as he had been. " She also explained how he had firmly held the towel and blanket over their head to smother them.

An uncle told investigators that the night before Nathaniel Ritz's death, the teenager had told him that Ritz's father had bloodied the teen's nose.

Hertel said that the motivations of the teenager were still unclear, but that the doctors who would look at it could enlighten them.

"During my stay here, which lasted 19 years, I'm not sure I've seen anything as disturbing and definitive as that," he said at a news conference. press conference in Versailles.

The prosecutor said that shortly before the death of the half-sister of the teenager, the boy squeezed a kitten so hard that his bowels came out, telling his relatives that he had scratched her .

Hertel said the suspect's father is currently in jail and that he thinks the boy's mother is cooperating with the investigation.

Neighbor Becky Horn told WLWT-TV that the death of the children had surprised the small community.

"All our street, we were in tears for weeks about it," said Horn.

Associated Press contributed to this story.