Seventeen years after his sister’s death and his claim that his mother was responsible for the tragedy, A.J. Hutto, now 24, finally spoke out about what happened when he was just 7 years old.

When he testified almost twenty years ago, everyone was watching him because his sister’s death was a big deal across the country.

On that day in 2008, he said that “mama got mad” and “dunked” his sister, who was 7, in the pool — and he still believes his words, insisting that his mother, Amanda Lewis, is “100% guilty.”

On August 8, 2007, A.J.’s sister, Adrianna Elaine Hutto, was found unresponsive in the family pool in Esto, Florida.

Lewis was the one who called for help, telling the emergency services that her daughter wasn’t breathing. They took her to Bay Medical Hospital, where she was declared dead an hour later.

According to Lewis’ story, she had just finished her night shift at the nursing home where she worked as a nurse and took a short nap while the kids were watching cartoons.

They were planning to go shopping for school supplies later, but when the temperature hit over 100 degrees, A.J. and Adrianna wanted to jump in the pool. This pool was a 4-foot deep, above-ground one, and kids weren’t allowed to use it without an adult watching them.

Lewis said that A.J. went inside the house and told him that Adrianna was in the pool. However, Lewis thought she meant that Adrianna was just near it because the pool ladder was locked up in the shed. He told A.J. to go back inside the house.

A.J. got out of the pool, and when Lewis peeked out the back door, he saw his son “scooping water with his hand, like he was trying to reach her.”

“When I reached the pool… she was face down… She looked very purple, very blue,” Lewis described his daughter. That’s when he called for emergency help.

At first, the authorities thought the girl’s drowning was just an accident.

But six months later, 7-year-old A.J. walked into a courtroom filled with strangers and shared what really happened that day, testifying against his own mother.

In a past interview with the police, he mentioned, “Mama dunked my sister. She did some things she wasn’t supposed to, so my mama got angry and threw her in the pool,” and now his mother’s future was in his small hands.

A.J. created a picture of the day his sister passed away. When asked to explain the characters in his drawing, he pointed to one and said it was his mom hurting his sister.

“How is she doing that?” someone asked. “Putting her hand over her face,” A.J. replied to the courtroom.

On his picture, he wrote the words “she did” and “too bad.” He then shared that his sister had died and it was really scary.

The jury found Lewis guilty of first-degree murder and serious child abuse. She received a life sentence in prison without the chance of parole.

After the event, A.J. moved into a different house. Nobody really knew where he was or what he was up to.

Until now.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, A.J., who is currently a firefighter, mentioned that he wasn’t “coached or anything like that” for the trial and only understood that his testimony would affect his mother’s future when he became a teenager.

“I just told them exactly what I saw word for word,” he explained, adding that as a kid, he felt “really, really nervous…Having all those people staring at you and everything. But I was just happy it was done.”

He also talked about his early years, calling them “darkness, trauma, and a lot of abuse.”

He claimed he and his late sister suffered physical abuse.

I went viral for telling a court aged 7 that my mom drowned my sister. I’m ending my silence 17 years later https://t.co/3ki6AN2GeD pic.twitter.com/eSz0RJ3qju

— Daily Mail US (@Daily_MailUS) April 6, 2025

For him, everything changed when a caring family took him in.

“It’s been a while since I’ve talked about it, so I can only remember bits and pieces of my old life.

“And mostly, I recall the abuse. Sometimes it would hit us out of nowhere. It was like we were totally caught off guard,” he shared about himself and Adrianna, who was his “best friend.”

Since he testified against his mom when he was only 7, he hasn’t seen her at all.

“The court decided that we can’t see each other, and I’ve wanted to keep it that way, just to avoid bringing back all those feelings and emotions and traumas into the open again,” he explained.

A.J. added, “It was really sad. You know, she’s my mom. But there was also some relief that what we were going through was finally coming to an end.”

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