8 year-old shooting Father and killing him!!

Yeah this needs to go to shooting in the breeze, news and not news.
Also the article doesn't say much. No revealed motive or charge. Meh.
Ahh much better:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/11/08/20081108stjohns.html
 

Vampire_Hunter_Bob

Cats are great
Ramen4ever said:
Yeah this needs to go to shooting in the breeze, news and not news.
Also the article doesn't say much. No revealed motive or charge. Meh.
Ahh much better:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/11/08/20081108stjohns.html

It really just looks like the kid is just stupid along with the father. If they can't find a motive they really are going to have a hard time being able to charge him as an adult specially since it looks like he did it out of curiosity. Either way the dad was a fucking idiot to actually give the kid a weapon like that, at that age he shouldn't have a gun or even a bb gun.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Vampire_Hunter_Bob said:
Either way the dad was a fucking idiot to actually give the kid a weapon like that, at that age he shouldn't have a gun or even a bb gun.

I agree that no matter how underpowered one might think .22-caliber rifles are, they're still way too dangerous to give to a kid. And I'm talking 14 year old here, not 8. That being said, the boy apparently premeditated the murders and did everything very coldly. He actually went to his neighbor telling he "believed that his father was dead"... That's not how a normal kid would react in such a situation.
 
Aazealh said:
I agree that no matter how underpowered one might think .22-caliber rifles are, they're still way too dangerous to give to a kid. And I'm talking 14 year old here, not 8. That being said, the boy apparently premeditated the murders and did everything very coldly. He actually went to his neighbor telling he "believed that his father was dead"... That's not how a normal kid would react in such a situation.

Not to mention that it completely eliminates the theory that the kid did not know what he was doing or that he did not grasp the consequences of his actions. I'd say the kid's ready to be tried as an adult or to be sent to a juvenile corrections facility and charged when he turns 18. Double homicide is double homicide after all. The only reprise I could imagine is if there was indeed abuse involved on an extreme level. But even then .. you don't shot someone just because your abused. You call the help line like they teach you in kindergarten.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Ramen4ever said:
The only reprise I could imagine is if there was indeed abuse involved on an extreme level. But even then .. you don't shot someone just because your abused. You call the help line like they teach you in kindergarten.

Well, I don't know. If he was severely abused and shot them to end it, I probably would let him off easy if I were in the jury.
 
Aazealh said:
Well, I don't know. If he was severely abused and shot them to end it, I probably would let him off easy if I were in the jury.

Are you implying that murder is an appropriate course of action against abuse? I find the fact that it's a double homicide (as in the other guy was shot too) in conflict with any assessment that attempts to claim that the child should be let off easy. If it was simply the father that was abusive then maybe. But I don't see how a father considered "nice" by everyone in the town could be abusive, the fact that he was trying to teach his son not to fear guns also points away from abuse. I mean if you were an abusive father.. the last thing you would want to do is teach your child how to shoot a gun. :ganishka:
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Ramen4ever said:
Are you implying that murder is an appropriate course of action against abuse?

I'm implying that if someone raped me repeatedly I'd feel like killing them, and I wouldn't see the wrong in it.

Ramen4ever said:
I find the fact that it's a double homicide (as in the other guy was shot too) in conflict with any assessment that attempts to claim that the child should be let off easy. If it was simply the father that was abusive then maybe.

And if it was both men?

Ramen4ever said:
But I don't see how a father considered "nice" by everyone in the town could be abusive

Hahaha, are you serious? "He was a quiet guy, seemed a bit shy. Never made trouble, never had problems with him. Always nice and polite. I never would have suspected it." is like the archetypical comment of people that knew serial killers and child molesters. I can't even recall how many times I've read that sort of stuff.

Ramen4ever said:
the fact that he was trying to teach his son not to fear guns also points away from abuse.

That's true, and I don't think there's a point in discussing whether it was right or not to kill an abusive father before it's actually confirmed he was abused. Maybe the boy's just a psychopath like Mary Bell and his dad's simply a victim.
 

SimplyEd

エンシェント カタストロフィ
Aazealh said:
I agree that no matter how underpowered one might think .22-caliber rifles are, they're still way too dangerous to give to a kid. And I'm talking 14 year old here, not 8. That being said, the boy apparently premeditated the murders and did everything very coldly. He actually went to his neighbor telling he "believed that his father was dead"... That's not how a normal kid would react in such a situation.


I agree. From what i've read on this matter i'd say that this was a conscious decision made by that kid. Now, whether there was a real reason for this murder or not doesn't change much about that circumstance.

Quote: "He's 8 years old. He just doesn't decide one day that he's going to shoot his father and shoot his father's friend for no reason. Something led up to this."

And here i must ask, why? An 8 year old boy (or girl) is perfectly able to make conscious decisions and act on them just as much as there are cases where kids are simply so mentally deranged that they are a valid threat to themselves and others. And seriously, should the latter be true in this case, then it would be quite unsettling that nobody ever realized that there's something wrong with the kid.

Quote: ""He was just too young. ... That child, I don't think he knows what he did, and it was brutal."

I wouldn't be so sure that the kid didn't know about the consequences of his actions. I can only speak for myself, but, when i was 8 years old, i knew very well about everything i did. I mean, sure, everyone makes mistakes and, more often than not, we are all doing something that could be considered "wrong", but we still decide to do it anyway. But murder is something totally different and i do think that this incident was no accident or the work of a "curious child that wanted to try out its new toys".

Quote: ""He (the father) wanted to make sure the kid wasn't afraid of guns, knew how to handle it,"

Why? There's absolutely no reason to think that knowing how to handle a gun is, in any way, beneficial for a child. My "idiocy-sensor" is tingling so hard right now, i'm afraid that my head might explode any minute now. The father obviously failed at his parental responsibilities..and common sense, for that matter. There's a reason why guns should never be made available for non-adults..and a very large part of the adult populace as well, if you ask me.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
SimplyEd said:
I wouldn't be so sure that the kid didn't know about the consequences of his actions.

Yes, indeed. The rest of the article certainly makes it look like he knew exactly what he was doing.

SimplyEd said:
Why? There's absolutely no reason to think that knowing how to handle a gun is, in any way, beneficial for a child. My "idiocy-sensor" is tingling so hard right now, i'm afraid that my head might explode any minute now. The father obviously failed at his parental responsibilities..and common sense, for that matter. There's a reason why guns should never be made available for non-adults..and a very large part of the adult populace as well, if you ask me.

Well, teaching his kid how to hunt and stuff, why not. Even though I think 8 year old is way too young for that (again, 14 year old seems more apt to me). Going out camping and hunting can be a bonding experience. But he shouldn't have let the kid have a gun of his own. That's just irresponsible.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Walter said:
:miura:: "8-year-olds dude."

YoungKiller.jpg
 

SimplyEd

エンシェント カタストロフィ
I expected something like this to happen.^^

Parents shouldn't teach their kids of how to handle firearms...they should teach them how to wield a sword! *sarcasm*
 
SimplyEd said:
I expected something like this to happen.^^

Parents shouldn't teach their kids of how to handle firearms...they should teach them how to wield a sword! *sarcasm*

Not bad Ed, not bad. But on a real note, I agree that teaching kids to "handle" firearms is not the right thing to do. Teaching them that firearms are dangerous and deadly weapons that need to be respected.. that is an acceptable lesson.
 

Vampire_Hunter_Bob

Cats are great
Aazealh said:
I agree that no matter how underpowered one might think .22-caliber rifles are, they're still way too dangerous to give to a kid. And I'm talking 14 year old here, not 8.
55622.jpg

These things are used to kill people, the mistake made by the dad was to not drill it into his sons head that if you point a weapon and fire at someone they will probably die. At that age the most the kid should learn about guns is gun safety.

Aazealh said:
That's true, and I don't think there's a point in discussing whether it was right or not to kill an abusive father before it's actually confirmed he was abused. Maybe the boy's just a psychopath like Mary Bell and his dad's simply a victim.
Funny enough I was thinking about the Mary Bell case as well, but there was a very different murder all together even more brutal then this case.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/bell/index_1.html More on Mary Bell for those not familiar with her.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Bell The much less in depth version.
 

SimplyEd

エンシェント カタストロフィ
Ramen4ever said:
Not bad Ed, not bad. But on a real note, I agree that teaching kids to "handle" firearms is not the right thing to do. Teaching them that firearms are dangerous and deadly weapons that need to be respected.. that is an acceptable lesson.


Not to mention the often overlooked lesson that "life" is something that needs to be respected.

Seriously, this sort of problem will never truly disappear as long as there are reckless people that are seemingly overburdened with their own responsibilities.
Plus, it's quite easy to come up with an easy scapegoat in such a situation. If something like that happened around where i live, the officials and politicians would be quite quick to come up with lots of ludicrous reasons of why something like that could have happened.

Lately it has been quite popular to blame various types of media and entertainment for extreme cases of violence, like videogames or certain movies. But that's just utter crap, coming from people who just want to push that sort of responsibility away from themselves and just want to jump on the next best witch-hunt bandwagon.

Now, there are a lot of elements that come into play for a certain type of behaviour of an individual, but the decision to ultimately act in a certain manner is the sole responsibility of that individual. I'm just saying that sometimes, there really doesn't have to be a reason for something to happen, but it still does happen.
 
SimplyEd said:
Not to mention the often overlooked lesson that "life" is something that needs to be respected.

Seriously, this sort of problem will never truly disappear as long as there are reckless people that are seemingly overburdened with their own responsibilities.
Plus, it's quite easy to come up with an easy scapegoat in such a situation. If something like that happened around where i live, the officials and politicians would be quite quick to come up with lots of ludicrous reasons of why something like that could have happened.

Lately it has been quite popular to blame various types of media and entertainment for extreme cases of violence, like videogames or certain movies. But that's just utter crap, coming from people who just want to push that sort of responsibility away from themselves and just want to jump on the next best witch-hunt bandwagon.

Now, there are a lot of elements that come into play for a certain type of behaviour of an individual, but the decision to ultimately act in a certain manner is the sole responsibility of that individual. I'm just saying that sometimes, there really doesn't have to be a reason for something to happen, but it still does happen.

Imo people can at times be perfectly justified for blaming various forms of media. Murder is not part of human nature. Granted the kid may have simply pulled the trigger to see what would happen .. curiosity. However the second death would be in conflict with that assessment. Another very possible option is that the kid learned about violence and/or killing through an external influence. That external influence could have been anything from tv, games, internet, classmates or even the parent himself. Hunting is the practice of taking another living creatures life after all. A child may not fully comprehend the difference between an animal and a person. Although in such a case the child should have been fully aware of the final consequence, the victim is not coming back to life.

Heck.. now that I think back to my childhood. The first time in my entire life that I learned about death and murder was when my parents read a children's picture book version of the Bible's old testament to me. I think that was at like 5 maybe 6. My point being that the child had to have received the information somehow and tv/gaming/internet are the most common information sources in the common household. At 8 I would suspect tv or gaming as neither requires much knowledge to use.

After further investigation I found the true culprit:

 

Scorpio

Courtesy of Grail's doodling.
Kids that age definitely know what they are doing, though they usually don't have a real grasp of consequences and unless they have good parents rarely have a solid moral compass. Premeditated homicide? Probably. But... Tried as an adult? Really? He's eight.
 
Scorpio said:
But... Tried as an adult? Really? He's eight.

Unless abuse is suspected and confirmed I don't see any problem with trying a murderer as an adult. Killing someone at 8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18... doesn't really make a difference if you pull the trigger willingly and on purpose. I mean.. it's not like you can shoot TWO people by accident.
 

Vampire_Hunter_Bob

Cats are great
Ramen4ever said:
Unless abuse is suspected and confirmed I don't see any problem with trying a murderer as an adult. Killing someone at 8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18... doesn't really make a difference if you pull the trigger willingly and on purpose. I mean.. it's not like you can shoot TWO people by accident.

At that young of an age, it doesn't seem possible to me that he would have really known what he was doing. No one will really know the whole story, it could even be as simple as him shooting both of them out of curiosity. I guess what it really comes down to is the kid is 8, I don't want to see him rot in Juvenal detention for the rest of his life.
 

Scorpio

Courtesy of Grail's doodling.
Ramen4ever said:
Unless abuse is suspected and confirmed I don't see any problem with trying a murderer as an adult.

I was confused, I'm actually rooting for the death penalty.
 

Okin

The Ultimate Battle Creature
An 8 year old is more than capable of premeditated murder. But if someone just put a gun in his hands, it's hardly premeditated. Also, we no nothing of the child's mental condition. We haven't even met him. I can only say that it doesn't seem like he accidentally pulled the trigger. Still, his motives for pulling the trigger could range from innocent curiosity and a lack of understanding to outright rage and killer intent.

I change my mind, though. The home contained fire-arms and there was a single parent. Its possible that it was premeditated.
 
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