‘He was not the hero’: Family agrees to probation for son who killed mother

The 17-year-old who fatally shot his mother as she argued with his younger sibling at their sprawling Andover-area mansion in 2018 stared mostly straight ahead with his hands folded in his lap, occasionally twirling his thumb, throughout his sentencing on Friday.

He declined to speak when given the chance.

Leslie Bruce, the boy’s maternal aunt, spoke and comments were read from his maternal grandparents. Family had all agreed on the 24-months of probation, which includes visitations with his maternal grandparents, Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said.

It’s what 41-year-old Lisa Trimmell would have wanted, Bruce said.

Their comments all talked about him taking responsibility for what happened.

“He was not the hero, he wasn’t courageous in the situation and he had so many other choices,” Bruce said, adding that their family all still loved him.

He had been charged with second-degree murder before pleading no contest to aggravated battery and criminal use of a weapon last month.

According to prosecutors, Trimmell “became upset” during a verbal argument with her 12-year-old son and made “physical contact” with him in the entryway of the home after they arrived back from a baseball game. Her older son, who eventually was charged in connection with her killing, retrieved a gun from the back of a clock sitting on a shelf, returned to the entryway and shot her once, prosecutors say.

He was 14 when the fatal shooting occurred in June 20, 2018.

The Eagle is not naming the boy because he was charged as a juvenile, and the district attorney’s office did not seek to prosecute him as an adult.

Trimmell was in the throes of a divorce from her estranged husband, local orthodontist Justin Trimmell, and was living alone in the Andover-area home. Her sons were living with their father but had visitation with her.

Bruce talked about the dysfunction in the home. She said her nephew had become “more and more disrespectful” toward his mother, telling her she shouldn’t be able to park in the garage and she shouldn’t spend his father’s money.

Trimmell died from a single gunshot wound to the neck, according to her autopsy report. The autopsy also showed she had signs of longstanding alcohol use, including cirrhosis of the liver, and had been drinking leading up to her death. Exactly how alcohol might have played into the night’s events, or whether other factors played into the shooting, has long been a central question in the case.

Trimmell’s mother, Mona Fromme, said her daughter was not perfect and “she was not abusive.”

“The bottom line is that (my grandson) made an awful choice and will have to live with that for the rest of his life, and to accept the consequences of his actions,” she wrote. “Although, I feel he would have never gotten to that point if he hadn’t been negatively influenced against his mother.

“I love my grandson and hope that moving forward he will remember his Mom with love and kindness, and that we can get back to some semblance of our previous close relationship.”

In asking Judge Jeffrey Goering to honor the probation agreement, defense attorney Dan Monnat said four mental health professionals all found that he is not a threat to anyone else.

Monnat, quoting one of the doctors, said: ‘My analysis concluded that (his) action was an uncharacteristic and isolated response. He had reacted to protect life.’”

Bennett, the district attorney, said it’s still not clear what took place that night.

Monnat also mentioned the boy’s support system, 4.0 GPA in high school and numerous wrestling accolades in asking the judge to enforce probation.

Monnat said his client won’t easily recover from the “climate of dysfunctionality,” or the difficult decisions he made that night, or the “17 minutes he spent on his cell phone with 911 staunching his mother’s wound and giving his mother mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while telling the dispatcher, ‘Hurry, send an ambulance’ and when EMS did arrive, ‘Can you guys save her?’”

But, he said, the “carefully discussed and crafted plea agreement fulfills the goals of the Legislature” for juvenile reform and for everyone on each side of the case, “it offers them hope.”

Goering, the judge, agreed with what he called a detailed and collaborative plea agreement.

“I agree with the statements that were offered by the victim’s family,” he said. “However you want to characterize what went on that night, it was entirely avoidable and didn’t need to happen. That said, there is really … no scholastic achievement, no other thing that can be accomplished in the respondent’s life that will ever bring back the life that was taken or the fact that he took it, so it is just a matter of living with it now.”

Bennett said the situation is tragic:

“A woman lost her life, a child lost his mother, another child lost his mother, parents lost their daughter,” he said.

About 25 people, including the boy’s father and brother, were in the courtroom Friday. Family came up and hugged him after the sentencing.

The Eagle’s Amy Renee Leiker contributed to this story.

This story was originally published July 30, 2021 at 4:48 PM.