GRANTSVILLE, UTAH: On Tuesday, a man from Grantsville, Utah, admitted to killing his mother and three siblings when he was 16 years old in early 2020.
Colin Jeffrey Haynie, who is now 19 years old, was in the Tooele courtroom as his lawyer read that he had pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated murder and one count of attempted aggravated murder. Haynie shot his mother, Consuelo Alejandra Haynie, who was 52 years old, and his three younger brothers and sisters, Alexis, 17, Mathew, 15, and Maylan, 12.
Colin Jeffrey
Haynie also admitted that he had tried to kill his father, Colin Haynie, by shooting him and hurting him. All five charges are felonies of the first degree. When the judge asked Haynie to confirm that he was giving up his right to a preliminary hearing by pleading guilty, Haynie said “yes.” As Haynie was only 16 when he shot his family, the Tooele County Attorney’s Office said in a press release that the maximum sentence for each of the charges is “an indefinite prison term of at least 25 years and could be for life.”
The prosecutors said Haynie didn’t go to school on January 17, 2020, because he was waiting for his family to get home. When his mother and 12-year-old sister Maylan came to the house that day around 1 p.m., the teen allegedly shot and killed them. Reports say that prosecutors said both victims were shot multiple times in the head, neck, and upper body. A charging document says that Haynie did the same thing to his 15-year-old sister Alexis and 14-year-old brother Mathew later that afternoon.
Haynie is also charged with attempted aggravated murder because he shot his father in the leg when he came home the same night. The older Haynie was only hurt, and the two of them fought over the handgun until Haynie hit his father in the head with something hard. When Tooele County Attorney Scott Broadhead announced the charges against Haynie, he said that a neighbor called 911 and took the father and son to the hospital. He said that the teen was caught at the hospital.
“The father said that he told the defendant that the defendant’s mother would be sad if he killed him,” court documents reportedly said. “He said that the defendant told him that his mother and other siblings had already died.” The father was then able to take the gun away from his son, and a family friend reportedly drove them both to the hospital for treatment.
KSL said that the family friend “just happened to stop by the house to drop something off, not knowing that tragic things had happened” when Haynie’s father asked the friend to drive them to the hospital. Haynie is said to have told a family friend on the way to the hospital that he had just killed his family. From the car, the friend called 911, and Haynie was arrested at the hospital. Since he was locked up, the teen reportedly hasn’t done anything to help. He is said to have told investigators that he wanted to kill everyone in the house except for himself, but he has refused to say why he did it. Haynie is currently being held in a juvenile detention center on a $4 million bond. His sentencing hearing is set for December 7, 2022.