Though his tiny hands were too small to hide his teary-eyed face, a pint-sized witness found the courage to testify against his mother, revealing that “mama got mad” and “dunked” his 7-year-old sister in the pool. After 17 years of silence, A.J. Hutto, now 24, is speaking out on addressing the court as a child, maintaining that his mother, Amanda Lewis, is “100% guilty.”
In 2008, a quiet Florida courtroom was shaken by the voice of a little boy who stepped up to share an unthinkable truth.
A.J. Hutto – his new name is protected for privacy – didn’t fully grasp the legal weight of what he was doing. He was simply telling the truth, trying to make sense of something he never should’ve had to witness.
The 7-year-old child, neatly dressed in a white button shirt, black knit vest, and light-colored pants, described in heartbreaking detail the moment he watched his sister, Adrianna Hutto, drown in their family’s backyard swimming pool.
At first, the incident was considered an accidental drowning until A.J. described to police something far more chilling – he said his mother, Amanda Lewis, had killed his sister.
Lewis’ version
On August 8, 2007, Lewis, a nurse’s assistant working night shifts at a nearby nursing home, returned home and laid down for a quick nap while the kids watched cartoons.
The plan was simple: a little rest, then off “to shop for back-to-school supplies,” Lewis, then 27, said.
But as the sun climbed higher and temperatures soared past 100 degrees, the kids begged to cool off in the above ground pool, about 4-foot deep, that according to the mother was strictly off-limits without an adult present, ABC reported in 2010.
“I told them that we couldn’t get in the pool today because we were getting ready to go. So, they wanted to go outside and play for a few minutes while I got everything ready,” she said.
Moments later, Lewis said her young son, 6-year-old A.J., walked back inside the house and told his mother, “Mama, Adrianna is in the pool,’”
“At first I thought he meant maybe she was by the pool, and I said, okay, well, tell her to come in.’”
When Lewis looked out the back door, she saw A.J. “raking in the water with his hand, like he was trying to grab [Adrianna].”
“I ran out, ran out of the house,” Lewis said. “When I got to the pool…she was face down…She was very purple, very blue.”
The little girl was airlifted to hospital where she later died.
“I kissed her, I hugged her,” Lewis said of what she did after a doctor told her that Adrianna was dead. “I touched her. Because I knew that it would be the last time, the last time I’d see her. I knew right then my baby was gone.”
Authorities at first believed the girl’s drowning was accidental.
A.J.’s version
Six months later, 7-year-old A.J. entered a courtroom full of strangers, not understanding that the fate of his mother rested in his tiny hands.
“Mama dunked my sister. She done some stuff that she ain’t suppose so my mama got mad, so she throwed her in the pool,” the little boy said earlier in an interview with police.
In court, A.J. drew a photo that showed one stick figure next to the pool, a second floating over it, and him several feet away by a tree.
When prosecutors asked what he was doing, he said “playing” in a tree.
Next, he was asked about the figures by the pool.
“Mama,” he said in the clip shared from court.
“Killing my sister,” he replied when asked about his mother’s actions in his drawing.
“How is she doing that?” A.J. was asked.
“Putting her hand over her face,” the boy told the court, his matter-of-fact delivery punching people in the heart.
On the left side of the sketch, A.J. had also written “She did” and “too bad,” which he clarified meant his sister “died” and that it was “scary.”
The jury found Lewis guilty of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
‘Word for word’
After the trial, A.J. began a new chapter far from the public eye.
He was adopted by a loving couple, given a new name, and quietly disappeared from the spotlight.
Since that heartbreaking case, he’s never spoken publicly about the events that changed his life forever.
Until now.
The 24-year-old, now a firefighter, told the Daily Mail that he wasn’t “coached or anything like that” for the trial and only realized “later on in my teenager years” that his testimony determined the fate of his mother.
“I just told them exactly what I saw word for word,” A.J. said, adding that as a child, he was “really, really nervous…Having all those people looking at you and all that. But I was just glad it was over.”
Darkness
Speaking of his childhood with his sister and Lewis, A.J. shared that it was “just darkness, trauma. A lot of abuse. Physically abused, both Adrianna and I were hit.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve had to talk about it, so I kind of remember some things about my previous life,” he said, adding that life with his adopted family was filled with love and happiness – a “360 difference.”
“And for the most part, I remember the abuse. Sometimes we wouldn’t even see it coming. It was literally sometimes we were blindsided,” he said of him and Adrianna, who was his “best friend.”
A.J. hasn’t seen his mother since his testimony: “It’s court appointed that we cannot see each other, and I’ve wanted to keep it that way, just so nothing’s getting brought back up… all the feelings and emotions and the traumas getting brought back into light,” he said
He added, “It was heartbreaking. You know, she’s my mother. But there was also some relief that what we were going through at the time was finally coming to an end.”
