11 year old to be charged with murder?

[LSN80]

http://www.wthr.com/story/15399277/...hild-accused-in-shooting?clienttype=printable

Details are being withheld here to the age of the boys involved, but county prosecutors have officially charged Stephen Frye, 11, of Martinsville, Indiana with murder and criminal negligence after the shooting death of his brother. Stephen was ultimately ruled to be tried as a juvenile, but county prosecutors pushed hard to try him as an adult following the fatal shooting of 5 year old brother Andrew. On July 5th, Stephen alledgedly shot 5 year old step-brother Andrew in the head, after which Stephen called police to report the gunshot. Despite the quick response and Andew being life-flighted to a hospital in Indianapolis, Andrew died just a few hours later. Accidental death was originally ruled as the cause of death, but evidence after the fact has suggested otherwise. County Prosecutor Steven Sonnega said the decision to attempt tocharge the eleven year old with murder as an adult and criminal wrecklessness was done with a heavy heart.

"It's very sad that we're here today. But that's part of our justice system. There's a difference between killing someone and intent to do so. We believe it was the latter.

Eleven year old Stephen was tried after the 911 call he placed was determined to be false. Stephen called 911 and told dispaatch that he was watching TV when he heard a pop from his brother's bedroom and and rushed to his aid. Stephen told dispatchers that his brother had claimed he was suicidal due to classmate's remarks. But prosecutors have shown that Stephen was the one who pulled the trigger, alledgedly Andrew refusing to clean the room the two boys shared. Trial is now underway in which a judge will determine the 11 year old's fate.

The child's attorney John Boren told the courtroom what happened was a fatal, tragic accident, and the shock of the incident was the reason he lied during the 911 call.

"Absolutely he did not know and he thoroughly believed it was empty.Yes, he pointed the gun at his brother. But he's an 11-year-old kid. Scared to death. Sick. Surprised. Shocked. It wasn't murder.."

The boy's stepfather has testified that the eleven year old has an extensive knowledge in the usage of firearms, as he's trained the boy in the woods himself. He apparently was grilled on gun-safety practices, how to turn the safety on and off, and had been taken hunting at least a dozen times already. As for Frye's mother, she's being charged with neglect for failing to keep the gun in a secure place. Neither she nor her husband were home at the time.

Thoughts on this?

 

[klunderbunker]

No he should not be charged as an adult. Let's say he did shoot his brother in cold blood. He's 11 years old. Can he even comprehend what he did? I'm really not sure, but I would lean towards no. How can you put him on trial and treat him the way you would treat someone in their 30s? Can he comprehend what's being thrown at him or handle a prosecutor pounding him with questions? I wouldn't think so either, nor would it be right to put him up there like that. He should be tried as a child, because he still is a child.

As for the mother, no neglect isn't appropriate for a charge. It should be WAY higher than that. As opposed to her son, she actually is an adult and should know better than her son. A gun is one of the most deadly inventions ever and should be nowhere near a kid. You wouldn't let an 11 year old near the keys to your car would you? Or perhaps let them near a heated oven with no one around right? It's stupid, and this was also. This is where a charge reading "failure to be intelligent" needs to be involved. This is ridiculous and she should be punished worse than that.

 

[Mustang Sally]

Sure, I think the kid is lying through his teeth when he says he didn't know whether the gun was loaded, just as he was lying when he tried to make it seem as if the younger brother shot himself. Face it, the older one got mad at his brother and decided to kill him.....simple as that.

But 11 is too young to try him as an adult, if for no other reason than that the jury wouldn't want the kid sentenced as one and might exonerate him because of that.

No, what they have to do is put the kid in juvenile hall for however many years they can, watching him carefully all the while to determine whether he's going to be a danger to society for the rest of his life, or whether this was the one-time act of a child too young to comprehend what he was doing.

Incidentally, they can blame the Mother for leaving the gun where the child could get at it, if they think that will solve the problem. Frankly, though, if the kid wanted his brother dead and didn't have access to a gun, he probably would've found some other way to kill him.

After all, the younger one refused to clean their shared room. The older one couldn't let him get away with that, could he?

Ugh.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

I don't buy into any arguments of "he didn't know what he was doing" or "he didn't appreciate the consequences of his actions". If this kid doesn't have any sort of legitimate mental ******ation issues, then I fail to see how he couldn't know what he was doing.

The mother should be charged with some degree of negligence. If you're gonna own a gun and if you have children, then you should do everything you can think of to make sure they can't get hold of the gun and/or are unable to use it. At the same time, the boy is the one who pulled the trigger. The mother not doing all that she could to keep the gun out of his reach doesn't change the fact that he used it to kill his little brother. According to this information, he was well schooled on how to use guns. Blaming the mother is just another example of trying to pass the buck, to blame someone else for something that was ultimately the doing of another person. The mother isn't blameless but punishing her worse than the one who actually shot & killed his younger brother is just wrong. People are tired of killer kids being sent to bed without supper and people just wringing their hands in fret and worry over them.

I also don't buy into the idea that the kid didn't know what he was doing because he tried to cover it up. Again, if this information is correct, he told lies to the investigators including trying to say that his brother was suicidal over hurtful remarks made by some of his classmates. Simply put, he knew what he'd done was wrong and he tried to cover his tracks by attempting to mislead the investigation.

 

[Smooth Sexual Chocolate]

Another kid tried as an adult, fucking worthless I tell you.

This is probably the third thread in the last month that I've had to bitch about this exact thing, trying someone as an adult doesn't change the fact that he's still a kid, the jury still see's an eleven year old kid and thus becomes almost impossible to get the conviction the prosecutor is going for. Not only that, but as kb stated he's eleven years old, that's 5th fucking grade; I'm sorry, but I've yet to meet a 5th grade adult in my life time.

As for the neglect charge, how is the father not just as responsible? He was clearly the gun owner and firearm wielder in the family, if anything they both should be charged with neglect. Fuckin' backwoods hillbillys.

 

[JWGunslinger]

As someone who has grown up around guns and was taught gun safety from a very early age, there is no way a kid like this would have accidentally shot his brother, unless he has serious frickin mental problems or he's that much of a dumb redneck then he knew damn well what he was doing because rule number one in gun safety is never point a gun at another person whether you think/know it's it's empty it is never pointed at a person or something you don't intend to shoot. This kid knew damn well what he was doing, he fucking shot his brother because he didn't clean their room. If that doesn't warrant some serious punishment then I don't know what does, this kid sounds like a sneaky devious little SOB who may be 11 but he knew full well what he did, he did it intentionally and he tried to trick the cops into thinking his brother killed himself.

Children being charged as adults is always a messy situation, sometimes it's a horrible thing because the kid really didn't comprehend what they were doing. I've watched several documentaries on the subject where for instance a child's stepfather has been raping him and his younger brother and their mother ignores it and doesnt care, the stepfather rapes and beats this kid's brother and the kid shoots the stepfather and then his mother for letting it go on. Now there I can see how this kid was so traumatized from everything that happened to him and was trying to save his brother's life, that is when charging a child as an adult for murder is flat out wrong. But the case that we are looking at is nothing like this, the only trauma this kid suffered was having to deal with a messy room, and for that he intentionally killed his brother for being annoying(so for being a brother), this kid deserves to be sentenced to a long time away no doubt about it.

 

[RicoLen]

I have a daughter that's about to turn 9... to think that in two years she could be charged with the murder of her little brother sickens me. If it were to come to that, it's not her fault, it's mine, and my wife's. That kid needs a seriously amazing set of foster parents, handpicked to rehab this kid and separate him from his parents forever right now.

The Step-father trained him in the use of firearms himself huh? Why? I'm a pretty damned open-minded guy, but leaving a firearm around where an 11 year old kid could get it while you're out of the house... there's just so many things wrong with that IMO.

If it were me, I'd sterilize both parents, and put them in jail for at least a decade or two, and take any & all remaining kids and put them in care of a specialist that could rehab this kid to the point where he understands what happened and WHY and can learn to live with it. This kid is going to have demons and be seriously f**ked up in the head because of this, not before it, but because of it. I feel sorry for this 5th grader, he didn't deserve his parents.