Mother’s Live-In Friend Arrested in Son’s Death

San Diego police Friday arrested a man they say stabbed to death his girlfriend’s 11-year-old son while stealing the woman’s television from the Logan Heights home they shared.

Steven Bell, 28, turned himself in to authorities Friday, Lt. John Welter said. Police believe the motive for the slaying was the burglary of the television to support Bell’s purported drug habit.

Johnny Joseph Anderson suffered multiple stab wounds in his upper body, Welter said.

Police sought Bell after the boy’s mother came home from work at 5:30 Thursday and discovered the body. Neighbors told police that, shortly before, they had seen Bell pushing a shopping cart with a television away from the home in the 400 block of 28th Street.

Bell reportedly had an on-and-off relationship with the mother, Debra Mitchell, and had been living at the residence for at least two weeks, Welter said.

Neighbors who responded to Debra Mitchell’s cries for help said the boy’s body was in a back bedroom, where he always watched television.

The neighbors, who kept an eye out for the boy when he got home after school, said they heard no disturbance from the home Thursday afternoon.

Police said there were no signs of forced entry.

Welter said the boy returned home from school about 3 p.m. Neighbors saw Bell leaving the residence with the television shortly before 4 p.m., Welter said.

When Mitchell came home from work, a neighbor heard her scream “He’s dead, he’s dead.”

“She was saying, ‘How could he do this? How could he do this to my baby?’ ”

Neighbors described the boy, whom they called by his middle name, Joey, as a happy child who routinely did his chores after school before going out to play with other children and visit neighbors.

“He was always very happy, very polite,” a neighbor said. “He had a lot of friends.”

Bell, who Welter said is unemployed, contacted Balboa Park officers at about 10:45 a.m. Friday. Bell told the officers he had read in a newspaper that police were looking for him.

Bell was booked into the downtown jail Friday night. Police said they will ask the district attorney’s office to file murder and burglary charges against Bell.

The Police Department’s crisis intervention team assisted the boy’s distraught mother, who is now in the care of relatives.

At Brooklyn Elementary school, where the boy was in the fifth grade, teachers and classmates mourned his death.

“He was a really happy kid, always happy,” said Minerva Johnson, vice principal of Brooklyn Elementary School. “He had springs on his shoes. He didn’t walk, he skipped.”

Johnson said she heard about the slaying before coming to school. She alerted the school’s crisis team, which broke the news to students.

“His friends in the classroom just fell apart today,” Johnson said.

Johnny had attended the school since he was in kindergarten and was well known by teachers and other children, Johnson said. He was a good student who already had been approved to move on to the sixth grade.

His mother was well known by the Brooklyn Elementary staff because she had worked there as a secretary and clerk a couple of years ago.

Johnson said Mitchell and her son were very close.

“Mom was always giving to her kid.”