Tamela D. Dutcher was fatally shot in her house a little after midnight on Aug. 14
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Credit: WBNS 10TV/YouTube; Delaware County Jail
NEED TO KNOW
- Bryanna Dutcher, her boyfriend Christian Evans and his roommate Dajameous Payne have been charged in connection with the killing of Tamela Dutcher
- Bryanna told investigators her parents would kick her out if they knew she was in a relationship with Christian because they were “very racist”
- In a paper she co-authored on adolescent homicides, Tamela once stated female offenders tend to primarily kill their own family members
An Ohio teen is among three people facing murder charges in connection with the fatal shooting of her mother last week, according to authorities.
The victim, 55-year-old Tamela D. Dutcher, was shot in her Delaware, Ohio home on Friday, Aug. 14, the Delaware County, Ohio Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
Her daughter Bryanna Dutcher, 18, was initially charged with obstruction of justice and has since been charged with murder, according to online court records obtained by PEOPLE.
Bryanna’s boyfriend, 20-year-old Christian Evans, and his roommate, 21-year-old Dajameous Payne, were arrested on Friday on murder charges, the sheriff’s office said in their statement.
Officers responded to the Dutcher home a little after midnight on Friday following a 911 call from Tamela’s husband claiming she had been shot, according to the sheriff’s office. She was taken to the hospital where she died several hours later.
Bryanna, Evans and Payne were arrested hours later.
The investigation revealed that hours before the killing, Bryanna had a disagreement with Tamela about cleaning, according to an affidavit cited by ABC 6.
When she vented to Evans about it, he allegedly told her, “If I were you, I would have killed her.”

Credit: Delaware County Jail (2)
Bryanna told investigators that her parents were unaware about her relationship with Evans because they were “very racist” and would’ve kicked her out of the house, ABC 6 reported, citing the affidavit.
Text exchanges between Bryanna and Evans allegedly show they had planned the murder in advance, prosecutors said in court on Monday, according to ABC 6 and 10 TV. Bryanna has denied claims she was involved in the planning.
Tamela was a doctor who, years before Bryanna’s birth, had co-authored a paper about the “homicidal adolescent.”
In the paper, titled “The violent and homicidal adolescent. Hearts darkened before time” and published in the International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health in 2002, Tamela wrote that while the majority of youth offenders are males, female offenders primarily tend to kill their own family members.
The paper recommended interventions based on arts and creative endeavors with cognitive behavioral therapy.
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Bryanna was charged with murder on Monday, in addition to the obstruction of justice charge she faced earlier, according to online court records.
Evans and Payne have both been charged with first-degree murder, according to online court records.
All three of them have been ordered to be under house arrest with GPS monitoring, their online court dockets show. The bond for each of them has been set at $300,000.
Plea information was not available in the online records. PEOPLE has reached out to the respective attorneys for Bryanna and Evans. Online court records for Payne did not show attorney information as of Tuesday.
