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Spring Hill Man Charged With Killing Mom

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By KYLE MARTIN

Hernando Today

Published: August 4, 2008

SPRING HILL - The blood trail led from his 81-year-old grandmother's bedroom out to the pool.

An early morning commotion Sunday woke Chris Simmons, who was visiting his family in Spring Hill. He got up and checked on his grandmother.

There was a lot of blood in Dorothy Simmons' bed and on the floor, as though someone had been dragged across it.

Chris Simmons followed the blood outside, where he found his father, Kevin Simmons, sitting on the edge of the pool. He was holding his mother under the water with his feet, according to an arrest affidavit.

Simmons, in his early 20s, pushed his father out of the way and tried to pull his grandmother out of the water, the affidavit states. There was blood on her face.

Kevin Simmons told deputies he had attacked his mother in her room, hitting her in the head and mouth with a telephone about 10 times and with a remote control, and then holding her under water, according to investigators with the Hernando County Sheriff's Office.

Deputies found Dorothy Simmons still halfway in the pool when they arrived at 1327 Altoona Ave., shortly after 3 a.m. She was dead.

"The scene was more than they expected," said Sgt. Jim Powers, a spokesman for the sheriff's office.

Whether she drowned or died from her injuries was unclear.

Kevin Simmons, 57, was arrested Sunday on a charge of first-degree murder and is being held at the Hernando County Jail without bail.

Investigators say he gave no reason for attacking his mother.

Neighbor Katrina Loftin couldn't make sense of what happened either.

She woke to the sound of a woman's screams about 3 a.m. and stepped outside into the predawn darkness.

A block down the street, she could make out a woman standing on a front lawn.

"Oh, my God!" the woman screamed, her hands waving in the air.

Loftin walked closer. She recognized the woman in the nightgown as Dorothy Simmons.

Then Simmons went back inside her house. Loftin went home, too.

Hours later, standing on the perimeter of a crime scene, Loftin was still in shock.

"I should have done more. I should have tried to help her," she said.

Ten minutes after Loftin went back to bed, deputies and paramedics arrived at the Simmons house. A medical alarm and a 911 call from Kevin Simmons' wife, Margo Wylie, had summoned help.

In 2003, Kevin Simmons bought the house in this typical suburban neighborhood, just east of the Spring Hill Golf Club. Loftin said the family added a room so Dorothy Simmons could move in. That was in 2006, according to property records.

Loftin said Dorothy Simmons enjoyed sewing and made the curtains for her room. Simmons invited her inside once or twice to see the sewing room.

Everyone seemed to get along, and Kevin Simmons had always seemed friendly, Loftin said. She said she had never seen deputies at the house before. Powers said he wasn't aware of any prior calls for service and that Kevin Simmons had no prior arrests.

Simmons is scheduled to make his first court appearance this morning.

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