Police say an Arizona teenager killed his mother and reported her as kidnapped in an attempted cover-up

Law enforcement in Arizona alleges an 18-year-old killed his mother and tried to report her as kidnapped to cover up her death.

According to the Pinal County Sheriff's Office, a jogger called police Wednesday morning after finding a woman's body in a field in San Tan Valley. Less than 10 minutes later, the son of Mary Collier, 38, called 911 to report her alleged kidnapping.

The Pinal County Sheriff's Office said its deputies quickly confirmed the body was Collier's.

Her son, who made the call, has been identified as a suspect in her death, the sheriff's office said. When officers arrived at the family home, the teen was “suffering from self-inflicted wounds” and was taken to a hospital for treatment.

Authorities did not release the name of the teenager who was charged with first-degree murder Thursday.

His name did not appear in a public records search for Collier, and NBC News could not find court records to determine whether he had retained an attorney.

Collier's body was found by a man named James Richey, who told NBC affiliate KPNX that he lived nearby. Every day he runs near the field where the body was found.

“Even when I saw them, I thought, 'No, this is like a Halloween prop or a Halloween prank or something,'” Richey said. “'There's no way this won't happen.'”

Richey noticed a broken knife with blood on it and said something clicked that he had stumbled upon a crime scene and he called 911.

Lt. Ross Teeple of the sheriff's office told KPNX that the cause of death appeared to be “point weapons” and blunt force trauma.

“We have no evidence that an abduction actually occurred,” Teeple said. “This suggests that they went out together, both consensually, and then once she was outside she was attacked and then just left in the desert.”

A GoFundMe was created by Collier's niece Zel Harwell to help cover Collier's funeral expenses and provide additional resources for her husband and two youngest children.

Harwell described Collier, a mother of four, as a loving woman who would call when she knew you were having a bad day.

“She gave when she had nothing and tried her best to lift others up with kind words and truth,” Harwell wrote.

CORRECTION (November 3, 2024, 3:02 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the community where this crime occurred. It's San Tan Valley, Arizona, not Sun Tan Valley.