A group home in Bartow is being shut down after a gruesome killing inside that has left a community shaken and city officials calling for accountability. Ten days ago, 81-year-old Patrick Benway was stabbed to death in his sleep — more than 100 times — at a rented home on Bluebird Avenue. The suspect, 18-year-old Moses Ojeda, had moved in just three hours earlier. “He was only there for three hours when he committed the crime,” Eddrena Thornton, who operated the home, said. “By the time I got home, he was dead already.” According to the city of Bartow, the house was never licensed to operate as a group home. Thornton, who owns a licensed adult care home across the street, admitted she was using the rental to house vulnerable adults — many of them with mental health conditions — without the required permits. “This constituted a group home under city ordinance,” Tray Towles, Bartow’s director of code compliance, said. “And she didn’t obtain the proper permitting.” Thornton says Ojeda’s mother and a mental health organization told her the teen was autistic, calm, and manageable — prompting her to offer him a place to stay. But Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd later revealed Ojeda had been Baker Acted six times this year and confessed to hearing voices telling him to kill. MORE: https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/crime/murder-bartow-group-home-shut-down/67-4d87ccc8-046b-4994-8a7e-d648e3da1011