Authorities: Man jailed for 30 years kills mom after release

THREE DAYS in October will define the rest of Steven L. Pratt's life.

The first day was Oct. 11, 1984, when Pratt was just 15 and put a bullet in his next-door neighbor's brain in Atlantic City after a fight his mother, Gwendolyn Pratt, had broken up earlier in their apartment there.

The second day, Friday, held out hope for promise because Pratt was released from Bayside State Prison after serving almost exactly 30 years for that murder.

But on the final day, yesterday, authorities say Pratt killed his mother.

Gwendolyn Pratt, 64, was found unresponsive in her home on McKinley Avenue near Trinity Avenue in the city's Westside section about 6:30 a.m. yesterday after a 9-1-1 call, authorities said, and her son, 46, was in the home when they got there and was detained.

The Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office, in a news release sent yesterday, said Gwendolyn Pratt died of "massive blunt head injuries." A spokesman there declined to comment further.

An appeal filed after Pratt's conviction said he had been waived up to adult court, though he claimed to have "emotional impairments" that reduced his intellectual age to less than seven years.

According to that appeal, which is published online, Pratt shot his neighbor, Michael Anderson, after the two had a fight. Pratt had grabbed a lead pipe from his bedroom after Anderson pushed him, but the older man took the pipe and struck Pratt several times, the appeal stated.

Gwendolyn Pratt, according to the appeal, found Anderson in her apartment - while her son was laying across a table - and made him leave. A short time later, Steven Pratt borrowed a friend's gun and shot the man.

Gwendolyn Pratt, a lifelong Atlantic City resident, took her son to the police station for questioning, according to the appeal, and he admitted to the shooting. At the trial, Pratt said the gun "clicked and it didn't go off" but he "shot it two more times."

A friend of Pratt's cited in the appeal declined to comment yesterday, and an attorney who represented him at the time could not be reached.

Steven Pratt was charged with his mother's murder yesterday and is being held in the Atlantic County Justice Facility in lieu of $1 million cash bail.

Members of the Pratt family could not be reached for comment last night, but city resident Warren Massey, former chairman of the Atlantic City Housing Authority, said he recalled the first time Steven Pratt was charged with murder.

"It's usually quiet back there. But a guy stays in prison for 30 years, since he was 15, and who knows," Massey said last night. "He probably just snapped."