Investigators say the 14-year-old used his mother’s pistol after days of rising conflict at home.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A 14-year-old boy is facing an adult first-degree murder charge after investigators said he shot his 41-year-old mother in the back of the head at their home near Cheyenne on March 7, then first told deputies she had killed herself.

The case matters now because it has quickly moved from an active sheriff’s investigation to felony court, with prosecutors arguing the shooting was planned and defense lawyers arguing it came from a child under strain in a troubled home. Theresa McIntosh died a day after the shooting, and a judge later found enough evidence to keep the adult murder charge in place while the case moves toward district court.

Deputies were sent to the 2300 block of Pine Avenue at 12:47 p.m. on March 7 after a report that a woman had been shot in the head. They found McIntosh unconscious but still breathing and rushed her to Cheyenne Regional Medical Center before she was flown to a hospital in Colorado. She died March 8. Investigators later identified her son, Havoc Leone, as the juvenile taken into custody at the scene. According to investigators, Leone first claimed his mother had taken her own life, but that account changed as detectives kept interviewing him about what happened inside the home.

Investigators say the shooting was the end of a dispute that had been building for at least a week. Court records described an earlier argument over Leone getting a D in math. During that earlier clash, investigators said, he took McIntosh’s Taurus 9 mm pistol from her vehicle and hid it inside a boot in his bedroom closet. On the day of the shooting, authorities said McIntosh and Leone’s father confronted the teen over a tablet they believed he had taken from one of McIntosh’s cleaning clients. Police said McIntosh called him a thief and demanded the password, which was written in a notebook in his room. Detectives said Leone told them he retrieved the notebook, also pulled out the hidden gun and, after tossing the notebook toward his mother while she was doing a puzzle on the floor, fired one shot into the back of her head.

The evidence described in court gave the prosecution a roadmap for a premeditation argument. Assistant District Attorney Kelly Strickland told the court that Leone had admitted thinking about killing his mother before the shooting and then acted when he found what the prosecutor called the “perfect opportunity.” Detective Miles DePrimo testified that Leone said he was angry and felt his mother did not understand him. Defense attorney Jonathan Foreman pushed back, arguing the boy was emotionally vulnerable and had grown up hearing degrading language from a mentally ill mother. Foreman said the evidence fit a lesser charge, not a planned killing. The judge did not settle those larger questions, but he found enough probable cause to send the first-degree murder case on to district court.

The home itself became part of the story detectives told. Testimony said Leone’s father was in the basement playing video games with noise-canceling headphones when he heard a popping sound. When he went upstairs, he found McIntosh wounded and heard his son say the gun had “just went off,” according to investigators. The father called 911 and tried to help McIntosh, later telling investigators he had hoped the shooting was a suicide rather than an attack by his son. Prosecutors used that sequence to underline how quickly the scene changed from a family argument to a homicide investigation. Defense lawyers, by contrast, used the same hearing to draw attention to the tension inside the house before the shot was fired.

Leone was charged as an adult with first-degree murder, and his bond was set at $500,000 cash only. At his March 18 preliminary hearing, Laramie County Circuit Court Judge Sean Chambers denied a request to reduce that amount and bound the case over to district court for arraignment. A first-degree murder conviction in Wyoming carries a life sentence. Prosecutors had not announced any decision on whether they would seek any further penalty, and the next major step is the district court arraignment, where the charge will be formally taken up again.

In Laramie County, the case has drawn attention not only because of Leone’s age but because nearly every key fact comes from statements made inside the home: the grade dispute, the hidden gun, the argument over the tablet, the puzzle on the floor and the shifting stories after the shot. Those details have turned a single gunshot into a broader courtroom fight over intent, abuse claims and whether a child’s actions should be treated as the clearest form of premeditated homicide. For now, the state’s account has cleared the first procedural hurdle, and the defense has preserved its argument that the killing was not planned in the way prosecutors say.

Author note: Last updated April 7, 2026.