Authorities are looking for a man convicted of killing his mother at age 13 and other crimes who walked away from a halfway house in Santa Ana.
The Orange County District Attorney issued an alert in the search for 20-year-old Ike Souzer, described by prosecutors as "extremely dangerous and violent."
Souzer's most recent criminal case involved a guilty plea to felon vandalism for painting graffiti under a freeway overpass. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail and probation, but released due to credit for time served on March 20 and checked into Project Kinship in Santa Ana.
He left the halfway house and failed to tell his probation officer where he was, prosecutors said.
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Souzer was convicted at age 13 of fatally stabbing his mother in Garden Grove. He also was convicted in October of making a shank while in jail in Santa Ana, the district attorney's office said. He escaped from a juvenile detention center in 2019 and a halfway house in 2022, and also attacked three correctional officers in 2021, according to the district attorney's office.
While on trial in juvenile court for the killing of his 47-year-old mother, Barbara Scheuer-Souzer, he escaped juvenile hall in Orange shortly after midnight April 12, 2019, and was arrested the next day at a McDonald's in Anaheim.
Souzer stabbed his mother in their residence in the 11000 block of Gilbert Street in Garden Grove on May 4, 2017. She told authorities before she died in a hospital that her son was the one who attacked her.
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According to court papers, Souzer told investigators when he was arrested for his mother's stabbing that he had been subjected to verbal and physical abuse at his mother's hands in the past. He claimed he was using the knife in self-defense after he got into a heated conflict over household chores, according to court papers.
During his trial for the killing, the defendant testified that he did not think he had mortally wounded his mother, who was terrified of knives, according to court papers. Souzer also testified that "he loved his mother and just wanted her to stop hurting him and for their relationship to be good,'' according to court papers.
City News Service contributed to this report.
