8-year old murders father/adult male.....what do we do with him?

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   TimTurnerposted 14 years ago

   Last year here in Arizona, an 8 year old boy came home from school, got a .22 rifle and waited for his dad to come home.  He came home and he shot and killed him.  A neighbor came over, presumably because of hearing shots, and he was shot to death at the bottom of the stairwell:  http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ … y1110.html
   
   When the story first broke last year, everyone thought there was no way an 8yo kid did it and that he was set up.  But it turns out he really did do it.
   
   The boy is now 9 years old and the state of Arizona has no idea what to do with him because there are no facilities to put a prisoner that's so young.
   
   The state doesn't want to him to leave the legal system when he turns 18 so they are trying to work out a plea deal.
   
   To house a juvenile inmate costs about $39,000 a year but the 9yo would need his own staff and housing to protect him from the others.
   
   What should we do with a murderer that's so young???

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      ledefensetechposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Beats me.  I know of a kid about that age who murdered his sister.  It wasn't an accidental discharge of a weapon, he flat out killed her.  He also shows early signs of being antisocial or psychotic.

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   Madame Xposted 14 years ago

   The article doesn't give any explanation about why the kid did it. Was his father abusive? I'm not condoning his actions, just looking for more info.

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      TimTurnerposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I remember the news reports said they thought he was abused but then never brought it up again.
      
      It's been a weird case for the last year or so.  Not much reason has been given.
      
      I definitely think he is at an age where he can be rehabilitated.  Putting him in the system for many years will only turn him more into a criminal I think.
      
      Give him mental help until he's 18 and than evaluate him.

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         Madame Xposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Yes, I agree. A nine-year-old can be helped.

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            ledefensetechposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            No, sometimes they can't.

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               Madame Xposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               That seems to be the fault of the therapist. Nine is too young to have certain unchangeable patterns of behavior, or if unchangeable, then he at least has the flexibility of youth to be teachable.
               
               Can you explain?

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                  A Texanposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                  I would imagine mental illness is unchangeable. Serial killers tend to start experiencing on animals maybe this kid just got a head start on his killing.

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                  ledefensetechposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                  I should, perhaps, clarify.  The case I'm thinking of was pretty much unprecedented in the severity of the patient's problem.  He was about the same age of the shooter in Arizona.  One night he stole a handgun from his parents went into the room he shared with his younger sister, got in the top bunk and fired downward towards where his sister was sleeping.  He murdered her.
                  
                  Throughout the time I knew this kid, he never once showed any emotion when talking about the issue and even stopped talking about his sister altogether.  He's also been noted acting with cruelty towards animals which is a sign of antisocial and/or psychotic behavior.  I'd worked with kids who were later diagnosed as being antisocial and homicidal and not felt as as apprehensive about working with them as I did this kid.  A lot of it probably had to do with the fact that he was so young.  It's rare, but not surprising to see antisocial and/or homicidal behavior among teens in that sort of population.
                  
                  I'd normally reserve judgment in the Arizona case, but the fact that this kid ambushed his neighbor who was trying to help is very, very troubling.
                  
                  Plus kids join gangs almost as young:  http://www.gangsandkids.com/gquestion0a.html#whenstart
                  http://www.ecgia.org/faq.asp
                  
                  
                  
                  I'm sure the number of 8 or 9 year old gang members is vanishingly small, but they do exist.
                  
                  So really it's not outside the realm of possibility that this kid knew exactly what he was doing, what we can say for sure is that it seems to be something that is vanishingly rare.

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   sooner than laterposted 14 years ago

   from what I remember of this case, the child seems extremely unremorseful. He lives his life like a video game.
   
   He seems very unpredictable. At that age I couldn't kill a bird.

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   TimTurnerposted 14 years ago

   I totally forgot about my friend who accidentally shot and killed his friend when he was 9.  He was showing off his dad's gun and it went off and hit his friend in the head.
   
   It took him about a year of being friends with him to tell me the story.  He has anger problems and sometimes can get scary when he's really pissed at you.
   
   He's a good dude but you can tell that incident has caused him some mental trauma

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      ledefensetechposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Sorry to hear that, but it sounds like it was an accident.  These two incidents were done deliberately by the kids involved.  It takes a different mindset to do something like that deliberately, don't you think?

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         Friendlywordposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Come on Ledefensetech! You take him. You the only person equiped to handle that type of kid.  We'll all chip in and buy you a bullet proof vest.

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   topgunjagerposted 14 years ago

   there's really nothing you can do about this situation, all we can do now is to avoid it from happening again, but the NRA wouldn't allow that=)

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   Paragliderposted 14 years ago

   They should chuck the father in jail for leaving a gun lying around - oh wait, he's dead...

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      kephriraposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Theresa a serious point in there, kind of. I don't know about America but it many countries there is a fixwed age of criminal responsibility, usually around 10, below which a child would be treated as a psychiatric rather than criminal case for a serious crime like this.
      
      But the problem with that is that it removes all crimi8nal responsibility altogether. I personally think that if a child under 10 commits a crime the parents should be prosecuted for it, because there must have been something seriously wrong witrh the way they brought up the kid. In the case of 10 year old gang members they clearly didn't set out to join a gang off their own back - they would have been groomed and brought into that life by older family members, who should again be the ones who are held responsible.

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         EmpressFelicityposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Surely it isn't always family members who recruit young children into gangs?  I would think peer pressure from non-relatives who are already gang members must play a huge part.  Or even in some cases, the child seeing gang members in their local neighbourhood and thinking, "this looks cool, I want to be a part of it".
         
         When it comes to young psychopaths like the one who murdered his father, I don't think we know how much of their antisocial personality is down to nature and how much is down to nurture.  Is there a "psychopathy gene"?  I would love to know the answer to that one.

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   Amanda Severnposted 14 years ago

   Jeepers! I'm so glad I live in a country where gun ownership is extremely rare. Even our police force are unarmed apart from specialist armed response units.

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   thirdmilleniumposted 14 years ago

   Put  him in a mental asylum, you do not have to spend all that money

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   Dame Scribeposted 14 years ago

   Some serious in-depth therapy, wow! proper education about the world and society around him since 9 yrs of whatever he came from must be overcome.

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