At 11:45 PM, five hours after Moses O’Hada had been dropped off at the group home, the 81-year-old man in the bed next door never stood a chance. Patrick Benway had only been living at the small single-story house on Bluebird Avenue in Barto, Florida, for a week when his new roommate’s son arrived. Moses was 18, recently released from a two-week stay under the Baker Act, and had a documented history of violence. The woman who ran the home, Adrina Thornton, took in residents referred by hospitals and mental health organizations.
When Moses’s mother dropped him off that Saturday evening, she warned the staff: hide the knives. They did. They put them away, but not where Moses couldn’t find them. Five hours later, Moses walked into Patrick’s bedroom and began stabbing him.
Patrick woke up. “Why do you want to stab me? ” the old man asked. “I just do,” Moses replied.
He stabbed Patrick 113 times. When detectives asked him why so many wounds, he said the knife wasn’t very sharp. Janice Pepin, Patrick’s friend and fellow resident, had moved into the home just ten days earlier, after the death of her husband. Patrick had made her feel welcome.
“That night I didn’t sleep well,” she later told reporters. “I kept hearing doors opening, closing, opening, closing, but I didn’t get out. I left my door locked and stayed in the bedroom. ”
She didn’t know that by morning, her dear friend was dead down the hall.
Moses cleaned the knife, washed the blood off his hands, put the weapon back in the butcher block, and changed out of his bloody hoodie. He slept well. The next morning, he ate breakfast and watched television. No one checked on Patrick until lunchtime.
He’d been dead for about twelve hours by then. When the staff finally went into his room, they found the old man covered in wounds, his hands cut from trying to fight off his attacker. Police arrived at Patrick’s room around 1 PM. They initially responded to a call about an injured person.
When they took off Patrick’s shirt, they could see he’d been stabbed multiple times. During the interview, Moses told detectives he heard voices telling him to kill Patrick. He said Patrick was a good person. “I just had to do what I had to do,” he said.
When asked if he regretted it, Moses responded, “I live my life with no regrets. ”
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd addressed the press directly. “Patrick had defensive wounds on him,” Judd said. “The suspect told us the knife wasn’t very sharp.
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Medical records showed Moses had been diagnosed with ADHD, bipolar disorder, paranoid schizophrenia, autism, anxiety, and sudden outbursts of rage. He had been Baker Acted six times that year alone. His mother had been afraid of him. When they stayed in hotels, she’d rent him a separate room.
She’d recently put him in a facility for two weeks after he assaulted her. Still, she warned the group home: hide the knives. “The reality is, does he have mental health issues? That’s abundantly clear,” Judd said.
“But his criminal intent was clear. ”
The sheriff noted that Moses had the wherewithal to hide the evidence, clean himself up, and put the knife back. He acted with malice and forethought. “This 18-year-old had no business being around other people,” Judd said.
The group home staff had already planned to send Moses back to his mother that following morning. They noticed he’d gotten locked out of the house overnight while wandering the neighborhood. They realized he needed more care than they could give. They never got the chance.
THORNTON spoke to reporters, explaining her decision to take Moses in. She knew he had mental health issues and was on medication, but she said she felt his condition wasn’t dangerous enough to threaten other residents. “He was calm and autistic,” she said. She thought she was helping.
She admitted she regretted it. “I felt guilty for putting Patrick and my other residents in that position, you know, with that boy in the house. ”
But the investigation uncovered more. Adrina Thornton was operating the group home illegally.
The house on Bluebird Avenue wasn’t licensed by the state. The city shut it down after Patrick’s murder, investigating Thornton for running an unlicensed facility. The actual owner of the home, a real estate investment company in Texas, had no idea it was being used as a group home. They began eviction proceedings.
Thornton, who legally operated a licensed adult care home across the street, said she’d opened the second location out of compassion. It was the first time she’d allowed a young person to stay there. She told reporters she planned to open another independent living home within a year but would first ensure her facilities followed code enforcement. “Since this happened, my antennas went up,” she said.
Local mental health experts cautioned against drawing broad conclusions from the tragedy. Charles Knife, president of NAMI Florida and a retired law enforcement officer, called what happened tragic. But he warned against seeing all people with mental illness as potentially violent. “The majority of people suffering a mental health condition are not violent,” he said, “and are more likely to be a victim of violence than commit it.
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He also pointed out a deeper problem: the Baker Act is designed to stabilize a crisis, not treat an ongoing condition. It typically lasts 72 hours. Moses had stayed two weeks under his last Baker Act, indicating providers saw he needed substantial help. Clara Reynolds, CEO of the Crisis Center of Tampa Bay, agreed the situation was a tragedy with many victims.
“There may have just been issues in implementing that discharge plan,” she said. “Maybe there were issues with medication or follow-up with therapy. ”
Moses was taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder and tampering with evidence. He was held in the Polk County Jail without bond.
Since the case hadn’t gone to trial, he remained innocent until proven guilty. In the weeks that followed, Patrick’s body was taken to Cremation Services of Polk County. His obituary listed his date of birth, July 23rd, 1943, but funeral services were actively searching for his family. Even after multiple media outlets released his name, it remained unclear whether his relatives knew what had happened to him.
Janice Pepin shared her grief with reporters. “I just thank God that I got to know him, even if it was only one week. He was a very gentle, quiet, loving man. ”
Patrick Benway had lived quietly for 81 years.
He deserved to be remembered for the gentle soul his friend described, not for the violent way he died. And his family deserved to know what happened to him. The tip of the knife used to kill him was never found.
Moses said he struggled to stab Patrick because the blade wasn’t very sharp.
