Why do people keep living there?
2004-04-15 | 11:55 p.m.

Seriously, ever since that whole election mishap 4 years ago, Florida has seemed like the craziest place. I guess I just never really paid attention to it before.

MIAMI, Florida (Reuters) -- A Florida teen charged with hiring an undercover policeman to shoot and kill his mother instructed the purported hitman not to damage the family television during the attack, police said Thursday.

Police in the southwestern Florida city of Fort Myers arrested the boy, 17-year-old Carlos Chereza, Tuesday on a charge of soliciting to commit first-degree murder.

Tipped by an informant that Chereza had offered to pay to have his mother killed, an undercover detective posed as someone willing to do the job, Fort Myers police said.

Chereza offered the detective $2,000 that he expected to inherit from his mother's bank account, and gave him the keys to the family apartment, a map of the apartment and a picture of his mother, the police report said. He asked that the shooting be made to look like a burglary, it said.

"Carlos stated that he didn't want anything to happen to the television," the detective wrote in the arrest report.

Police arrested the teen immediately after the meeting with the detective, and the mother was unharmed. Police spokeswoman Kara Winton said the motive was related to domestic problems within the family, but declined to elaborate.

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