A woman in Washington state is suspected of murdering her father with an ice ax — plunging the tool into his head multiple times during an argument over their home lights being on — after allegedly becoming “overwhelmed” with emotions about the 2024 presidential election, Cops say.
Corey Burke, 33, was allegedly “clapping inside her home” when officers arrived at her Seattle home on November 5 and discovered her covered in her father’s blood, according to King County charging documents.
Prosecutors say Burke admitted to killing her father, Thomas Burke, in an act of rage over the lights being turned on inside their home, with the charging documents describing how she was “having a mental health crisis” triggered by Election Day, the Seattle Times reported Monday.
Burke reportedly told detectives that there was “something important” about the 2024 presidential race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and she was “overwhelmed” by the emotions that arose from it. Police say her father attempted to turn off the lights in the house that night during Burke’s alleged mental episode, and the two of them argued about it before Burke allegedly snapped.
According to prosecutors, she tripped her father and then began physically attacking him, biting and strangling him before allegedly killing him with an ice axe.
“Corey stated that she had to bite her father while choking him because he was too strong,” according to the doctors who arrested her. “Corey stated that once her father ‘went limp,’ she felt better. According to Corey, she then repeatedly hit him in the head with the ice pickaxe.
Corey then sat next to her father and watched him until she noticed that he was no longer breathing.”
According to police, after allegedly killing her father, Burke went around the house and began breaking windows, telling cops it was “an act of liberation” for her.
Officers arrived soon after and arrested Burke. While in custody, she allegedly told detectives, “I killed him,” referring to her father, before explaining why.
“Corey stated … when her father started arguing with her about the lights being shut off, that she ‘just freaked out,'” according to her summonses. “The defendant told Detectives that she knew that she could not convince him to keep the lights off.
So she went upstairs retrieved an ice ax and tripped her father, strangled him with the ax and her hands and then bit him and hit him several times in the head and side with the blunt and sharp ends of the ice ax.”
Prosecutors claim Burke was unable to care for herself, which is why she lived with her father. The coroner’s report identifies Timothy Burke’s death as a result of severe blunt force trauma, asphyxiation, and puncture wounds.
Burke was being held at the King County Correctional Facility on a $2 million bond for first-degree murder on Tuesday, according to jail records, and she is scheduled to appear in court on November 21.
