The Port Charlotte teen charged with killing his mother in Polk County this week told deputies he would kill his mother a year ago.
NBC2 obtained records from the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office interactions in 2023 with Collin Griffith .
An FSW school officer called the sheriff's office to do a mental health check at the Griffith home on Astoria Avenue on Sept. 11, 2023.
That officer said Collin told her that he and his mother, Catherine Griffith, got into an argument that morning, where his mother pulled a gun on him.
Collin told the officer his mother said she would kill him, threatened to kill herself and asked him to take the gun from her to kill her.
Catherine told the deputy that the story is not true, saying that Collin was mad at her for taking away his phone and Airpods since he was failing classes.
She said that her son has severe PTSD because his father, Charles Griffith, held him captive for 1,041 days when they lived in Oklahoma without human contact.
In February 2023, Collin shot and killed his father because he said his father threatened him with a knife.
Prosecutors did not charge him because they couldn't rule if it was self-defense.
After the deputy interviewed Catherine during that home visit, Collin was put in protective custody for a mental health evaluation under the Baker Act.
The next day, a Juvenile Intervention detective spoke with Catherine. Collin's mother told the detective she had contacted mental health facilities across the state to find one to help Collin.
She said Collin told staff at his current facility that he was going to kill himself or her if he returned home.
Catherine mentioned that he was seeing a therapist but also threatened to kill them if she diagnosed him with anything.
Catherine said the therapist diagnosed him with PTSD and a personality disorder.
During this interview, Catherine went into more detail about Collin's past with his father. She said they divorced and Collin went to live with his father in Oklahoma in 2019.
She said she never saw Collin after that. Collin told her in their few phone calls that he told his father he was gay, and then his father wouldn't let him go to school as punishment.
Catherine said Collin was isolated at home, didn't go to school and ate one meal a day.
She said Collin moved in with her after he killed his father.
Eight days after he was removed from his home in September 2023, Collin was released from the mental health facility.
But as he was leaving, he told staff, "I will kill myself or my mom" if I go home. He added he would "throw them out of the car, shoot or stab them, I've done it before, to my dad, I know I can do it again."
Staff kept him in the facility.
Catherine got him into a long-term facility near Jupiter for more treatment.
He spent a few months there but later returned home to live with his mother.
In November 2023, someone called the sheriff's office that Collin had just attacked his mother while eating. Collin's grandmother said she witnessed Collin pull his mother's hair and knee her in the groin.
The sheriff's office arrested Collin on domestic violence charges. In jail, he told deputies if he has to get in the car with her (mother) if he's released, he's going to kill her.
After about seven months in therapy, Catherine said, "I don't think he can come home though, because I don't feel safe with him coming home saying these things."
On September 6, 2024, the Polk County sheriff's office said Collin and Catherine got into a fight, and he drove up to stay at his grandmother's home in Auburndale. His grandmother was out of town.
His mother went up there to check on him. Two days later a neighbor witnessed Collin grab his mother by the hair outside and then they went into the home.
A few hours later, Collin called 911. Sheriff Grady Judd said Collin told them, "I've had a very, very long fight with mom, and she fell on a knife, and she's bleeding from the neck."
Deputies showed up and found him covered in blood. They concluded from their investigation that Collin stabbed her several times in the neck, killing her.
He's charged with murder.