Police: South Side man charged with killing his mother told dispatchers 'this is what she gets'

A South Side man told Pittsburgh police he had no interest in saving his mother’s life when he called 911 to report she was unresponsive Monday in what would ultimately become the 85th time police were called to the Sarah Street home.

“This is what she gets for being so self-centered,” Michael Hensley told a dispatcher when he called 911 just after 10:45 a.m., police wrote in the criminal complaint. “I don’t care about saving her life. I called the medics, that’s as much as I want to do.”

Police and paramedics arrived and found 66-year-old Annette Morros dead on the living room floor. Detectives wrote in the complaint that Hensley’s hands were swollen and had blood on them. They wrote that Morros had a lump above her left eye and bruising on her chest, neck and arms. There were blood smears, spatter and stains on the walls and carpet, according to the complaint.

The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office would ultimately rule Morros’s death a homicide caused by blunt force trauma.

Hensley told first responders his mother was a heroin addict and “he didn’t do anything and didn’t know what happened,” detectives wrote. A day later, Hensley would call detectives and tell them that, now that he was thinking more clearly, he did, in fact, recall doing CPR on his mother after he called 911, according to the complaint.

Police looked at five years’ worth of calls to the two-story home that was turned into apartments. They found 84 calls to the address, 34 of which were specifically for apartment no. 1 where Morros and Hensley lived. Those calls resulted in multiple arrests for Hensley, according to the complaint, and police found even more arrests dating back later than five years.

One witness told police that Morros had knocked on their front door crying for help, according to the complaint, though the witness said she was unintelligible. The witness told detectives that Morros seemed as though she was under the influence of something, and Hensley appeared the same way when he came to usher his mother back home.

The witness, according to the complaint, said Hensley was asking his mother if she’d picked up his prescription, then told her they had to call the pharmacy. The witness noted it was 11:30 p.m.

A second witness said they were in the home Sunday morning and saw Morros conscious but only somewhat responsive sitting on the living room floor, according to the complaint. The witness said Morros was bleeding from her mouth and, when the witness asked Hensley what happened, he replied that Morros wouldn’t give him his Xanax.

According to the complaint, the witness asked Hensley if he’d hit Morros, to which Hensley allegedly replied, “No, if I would have hit her, she would be knocked the (expletive) out.”

On Tuesday, a day after police found his mother dead in their home, Hensley called detectives to say that what they saw on the walls wasn’t blood spatter, a detective wrote. He also said that, now that he was thinking clearly, he remembered doing CPR before police arrived, detectives said.

A man living in the home with Morros and Hensley, who Hensley identified as his stepfather, said he did not recall any incidents happening there, police wrote, noting that he seemingly suffers from dementia or another memory disorder.

Hensley, 42, is charged with one count of homicide. He remained in the Allegheny County Jail on Thursday night. Court records did not list an attorney.