11-year-old boy to stand trial for mother's murder, motive suspected to be VR headset
11-year-old boy to stand trial for mother's murder, motive suspected to be VR headset
An 11-year-old Wisconsin boy will stand trial for his mother's murder. Police testified family members were worried the motive behind the homicide was a VR headset.
An 11-year-old Wisconsin boy accused of murdering his mother has been ordered to stand trial.
The boy is charged with first-degree intentional homicide. The district attorney's office is seeking to try him as an adult. The court has ordered that the boy's name not be revealed because he may still be tried as a child.
In July, the court found the boy competent, according to court records.
Milwaukee Detective Timothy Keller testified in court on Tuesday about speaking with the boy about his mother's death.
The detective said he questioned the boy the next day and the then 10-year-old boy admitted shooting her but called it an accident, according to WISN.
"[The boy] stated that he took up a shooting stance and was pointing the gun at her as she was walking towards him and asking him to put it down. And that's when he indicated that he fired the gun with his intent to scare her by shooting the wall behind her," Keller testified.
"He had made a purchase on his mother's Amazon account for some virtual reality goggles the morning after this homicide occurred. And [family] were concerned because he had had an argument with her about whether he could have these prior to the homicide," Keller said.
Its interesting how if the boy shot and murdered someone else, the mother would be the one responsible for it, due to leaving the gun somewhere the boy could access it and shoot it.
But now that she specifically is the one who got shot, with her own gun, now the boy is the one responsible.
It doesnt seem logical that you can have both, who gets shot with the gun shouldnt shift responsibility. She left an extremely dangerous and lethal weapon laying around where the 11 year old boy could just get his hands on it. She is responsible for her own death through her own negligence.
It's actually insane that this literal child is being tried for an adult, a threshold he is barely half way towards hitting. This kid literally is still in elementary school and has only just started to be taught basics of multiplication. His brain isn't even remotely close to done developing, and he hasnt even really started puberty yet.
If he was, say, 16 or 17, sure I could see it. But fucking eleven? Insane, ludicrous, actually crazy. That is not an adult, and anyone trying to try the kid as an adult is a fucking lunatic.
She would be responsible for an unsecured firearm and child endangerment, but I don't think they're usually charged with the actual murder (unless it would be a felony murder rule).
But this kid certainly shouldn't be tried as an adult.
In any case, I'd like to back waaaaay up and ask how this kid got access to a loaded gun in the first place.
I think it's more often an involuntary manslaughter charge due to the gross negligence of allowing a child access to a gun. But sometimes it can be counted as murder even if it was unintentional if you were doing something so reckless and stupid you should have realized it would likely result in someone's death. There's an argument to be made that keeping a gun somewhere a child could access it would count.
Basics of multiplication in sixth grade? We were learning that in second grade ...
In both cases both would share the responsibility
So by your logic and reasoning this poor woman apparently committed suicide(?)!
Yes he's a kid but he also resides in a state where anyone committing this crime is tried as an adult - that doesn't mean that he'll go to an adult prison if the outcome is prison time. If you read anything about it you'll know he's a straight-up psychopath and needs serious mental help!
If you read anything about it you’ll know he’s a straight-up psychopath and needs serious mental help
Source? Because the above article didn’t contain any of that info.
So by your logic and reasoning this poor woman apparently committed suicide(?)!
Lol, what?
Negligence is not Suicide. Suicide is intentional. If she put the gun in the childs hand and forced him to shoot her with her own hands, that would be suicide.
But negligence is what its name implies... Neglect.
If you are an idiot and accidently kill yourself, do you think that is suicide? Obviously not, right? You are of course still responsible for having done it, but an accident != suicide.
I think the OP was under the impression the child would not be charged but the parent would if they had shot anyone else. In that circumstance he made it would not really be suicide as much as an accident I think. Like accidentally shooting yourself due to negligence in handling the firearm but here the negligence is allowing access to a child.
I don't understand the US thing about trying children as adults. The whole thing about children is that they're not adults, what's the point of having specific laws to protect children if you're just going to ignore them? What possible argument could there be that a 11 year old is an adult?
American political culture has a strong vein of demanding everyone be "tough on crime", in the entirely mistaken belief that crime comes from not being harsh enough in sentencing. We also know that eleven year olds aren't fully competent adults and we have carve outs in juvenile law that reflect that obvious truth. The intersection of these two facts means that charging decisions on cases like the above depend as much on what the actual right way to charge is as they do on how much what the kid did frightens the general public. What that tends to end in is laws that say you can only charge a minor as an adult in exceptional cases and then a push to make every minor charged with a violent crime the exception.
Alright I can see how culturally you end up going in that direction.
Still, though, I can't fathom someone being smart enough to go through all that education to become a state prosecutor, then seeing a terrible story about a kid have access to a gun when they clearly shouldn't and killing their own mother through sheer childish stupidity and then coming to the conclusion that "you know what would reestablish justice in this situation? Injecting poison into that kid and watching him die."
Who's that person? What happened in their life to make them think like that?
It doesn't matter, he still killed his mother and that is the reason why he's being tried.
The fact that he's a kid and did that makes the case more ironclad in the eyes of most: he's clearly a bad seed so he must be gotten rid of now to protect the lives and rights of everybody else.
Wow, you guys must have a very shallow understanding of what "childhood" and "justice" mean if the culprit being less responsible for their actions make the case more ironclad.
Edit: nvm I've looked at your profile after seeing some of your unhinged comments here ; I now fully believe you are eleven yourself and under the delusion that you are, in fact, an adult.
A bad seed? Trim the bad ones for the sake of the future?
Would you put the neurodiverse into a gas chamber for being a burden on society, too?
My lord, you need some help.
This is a kid, it's an accident, a tragic one. He's going to need a psychiatrist his entire life. The punishment is he will live with it.
The 10 year old got a hold of a loaded gun, presumably owned by his criminally neglectful parents, who were responsible for it's secured storage. Oh well, so sad, too bad, glad it happened to them, and not a school full of children.
Sounds like she did not lock up her gun and did not teach her child gun safety at all. That's sad but unless they can show intent, it seems a little ridiculous to charge him.
I guess never too young to be taugh gun safety but it just feels weird to prepare a 10-yo kid to handle a gun. Dunno if that would've saved her in this case. Should've had the gun in a more secure location.
That's sad but unless they can show intent, it seems a little ridiculous to charge him.
He did shoot her and by his own account understood what guns do. Of course they're going to charge him.
You're right. I can't think of any way this could have possibly been avoided. After all, this happens in every civilized nation in the world...
Even if they try him as an adult, what happens to him if he's convicted? How do they punish an 11-year-old?
Unfathomably sad situation.