A black police officer, 55, was beaten and stabbed to death by her 15-year-old grandson after she came home to find he had skipped school, prosecutors said

African-American Keshawn Perkins was so incensed at being shouted out by Hester Scott, who was on the Chicago force for 25 years, that he hit her with a lamp until she shut up and then stabbed her repeatedly with two kitchen knives. The ninth grade student, who had been adopted by his grandmother, wrapped her dead body in a blanket and dumped her in a backyard sewer trap before fleeing with her purse, a court was told. Perkins has been charged as an adult with armed robbery and murder. Judge James Brown ordered him to be held without bail. Scott, a mother of two, had adopted Perkins and his three siblings after her drug-addicted daughter could no longer care for them. She struggled to control the erratic and at times dangerous behavior of her teenage grandson, who has bipolar disorder and has occasionally been hospitalised for mental health treatment. He had also run away from home at least twice to see his convicted felon father. Scott arrived home to find her grandson had played truant and was asleep on the sofa with the television on. When Perkins awoke, he grabbed a lamp and used it to repeatedly hit her on the head and also stabbed her several times with a kitchen knife. A witness reportedly saw Perkins, covered in blood, dragging an object in the backyard and then saw him fleeing with the purse in his hands. An autopsy determined that the she died of blunt force trauma to her head and also indicated that she had stab wounds to her hand, neck, back and head, prosecutors said. One of the neck wounds severed her jugular vein. Perkins faces a mandatory minimum life sentence because the victim was a police officer.