A pastor’s son accused of beating his parents to death and fatally stabbing his five-year-old brother has been extradited back to Houston, Texas after fleeing to Mississippi.
With a chilling stare, 19-year-old Isaac Tiharihondi stayed silent as he was hauled from a police car in cuffs and led into the police station in Harris County on Monday night.
He was extradited from Raymond, Mississippi after FBI agents tracked him down to a hotel room – paid for with his father’s credit card – on February 4. He was held in isolation in a Raymond jail cell.
The teenager, who is due in court on Tuesday, faces two counts of capital murder for killing his father, Israel Ahimbisibwe, his mother, Dorcus, and his five-year-old brother, Israel Ahimbisibwe Jr.
The family was found dead beneath towels and blankets in the bathroom of their west Houston home on February 2 after they failed to attend church – but authorities believe they had been murdered nearly a week before.
Their oldest son allegedly beat his parents to death with a baseball bat, a lamp and a hammer, and stabbed his little brother in the back and neck with a kitchen knife. The young boy’s body was found in the bathtub, KPRC reported.
Rugs inside the apartment had been moved to hide blood stains, and there were other signs that the bodies had been moved or dragged, according to court documents.
Tiharihondi had told friends and family that he had joined the Marines and was leaving at the end of the month – but the couple’s middle son, 17-year-old Emmanuel, who was at school in California, said that when he last spoke to his mother on January 27, she had indicated that they didn’t believe Isaac and were going to confront him about it.
Recruiters in Houston said there is no record of him ever enlisting in the Marines.
Family members and friends said the latest they heard from the couple was Tuesday January 27.
After the murders, friends said that Tiharihondi seemed normal. He went to lunch with a friend and made an apparently fake phone call to his mother, who was already dead, ABC13 reported.
Sources told KHOU that Tiharihondi left the apartment a few days after the murders and got a ride to New Orleans, then took a cab to a motel in Jackson, Mississippi.
Isaac, who graduated from Memorial High School last year, shared the apartment with his parents and little brother, who they called ‘Jay’, KPRC reported.
The couple’s third son, Emmanuel, 17, was at his private school in California at the time.
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No signs of forced entry were found at the house and the only open window was in Tiharihondi’s bedroom. Authorities also found the parents’ opened wallets, which were missing their credit cards.
The Church of the Redeemer, Episcopal’s website says the vicar was from Uganda and had studied at Princeton Theological Seminary, Harvard University Divinity School and Rice University.
Dorcus Ahimbisibwe was a Sunday school teacher at The Church of the Redeemer, Episcopal, according to KTRK.
The kid looked absolutely remorseless – either high on drugs or just sheer evil, I’m not sure which or both. The only survivor is his 17 year-old brother who was at a private school in California at the time. Thank goodness for that small mercy. The community is now taking care of him and paying his way through college. These were good, Christian people who did not realize what a demon their son was. He didn’t just kill them – he butchered them. The Marines never heard of him. There is no coming back from something like this. The boy should be put to death – Texas, you have a death penalty. Use it.