8 year old who shot Grandmother will get...counseling.

[LSN80]

87 year-old Marie Smothers was babysitting her 8-year-old Grandson at her residence this past Thursday. Smothers was in one room watching television, her grandson, another, playing Grand Theft Auto. Minutes after the boy had finished playing, he found a .38 Caliber gun in Smothers purse, and shot her to death.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/26/us/louisiana-boy-kills-grandmother/index.html?hpt=ju_c2

After a hearing conducted yesterday by a Louisiana judge, the boy was sent home to live with his parents. This, just 4 days after shooting his father's mother to death from what the autopsy has shown to be just 3-4 feet away. Under Louisiana law, however, no crime was actually committed, even of the juvenile nature. The age for charging him with....something.....is ten, and since the boy falls under that, no legal action can be taken. District Attorney Samuel D'Aquilla of the East Feliciana Parish, the County in which the incident occurred, had the following to say to CNN regarding the boy and his state of mind following the hearing yesterday:

"He's distraught. It's really taken a toll on him. He looks visibly shaken. It was determined that he did the shooting and it was an accident. He thought it was a toy gun, a play gun. It's not a crime if he's under 10 years old. We're still trying to figure out how to help this juvenile and his parents.It's not a bad environment. They have two other children,

What makes the situation(if it gets)sadder is that there was no apparent falling out between the boy and grandmother, and that they had a healthy, loving relationship. I question the wisdom of an 87-year-old woman playing babysitter, and further, that of an 8-year-old playing Grand Theft Auto, but I can certainly understand where the D.A. and judge are coming from. While you and I wouldn't mistake a .38 for a toy even blindfolded, I imagine, it's hard to say the same for an 8-year-old.

My issue comes with this part of the statement from the DA:

"We're still trying to figure out how to help this juvenile and his parents."

Since the law has clear parameters regarding what cannot be done regarding charging a boy his age, shouldn't it have the same parameters of what they should do? I'm not advocating for charging the boy whatsoever, it's just an emotional time in the family, undoubtably, and to simply return the boy home and have them return September 10th for a follow-up hearing seems a risky proposition. It was the family who told the judge they planned to enter counseling, under the Families in Need Of Services(FINS) program, which is a state-run program for low-income families not associated with the criminal justice system in any way. Chief Counsel for the Office of Juvenile Justice, Martha Morgan, had the following to say regarding the incident and the family's decision to enter counseling:

"The family can be put under a plan of counseling or other types of services and they can also get supervision at that time. We try to get them the services they need to keep them from becoming juvenile delinquents."

I say this without trying to cast aspersions or blame, but how is four days sufficient time to determine if returning home to his parents' home is the best place for the boy right now? I applaud the efforts of the family to get counseling and the FINS program to help keep this child from becoming a juvenile delinquent, but he just shot his grandmother to death four days ago. The child, playing Grand Theft Auto, apparently wasn't taught very well the difference between shooting people on a television screen and doing so in real life, even if believed to be a toy. Further, the house must be a powder-keg of emotions right now. Yes, the boy lost his grandmother, but his father just lost his mother.

Will it truly be "that easy" for the parents, especially dad, to shower his son with the love, affection, and comfort he truly needs right now, knowing that same boy shot his mother to death?

If I were a parent and my child shot my mother to death, I'm not sure how I'd react myself, accident or not. And that uncertainty makes me sure that my home would likely not be the best place for my 8 year-old to be, right away. I'm not sure I could provide him those things, comfort, love and support. With my mom being killed, I'd need them myself, and it's a truth, albeit a cold, harsh one, but the boy being there would just serve as a reminder of what I just lost.

For me, it would take some time.

Do you agree with the judge's decision to send the boy home just four days after shooting and killing his grandmother?

Is the law that prevents children under the age of ten from being charged, regardless the crime, a good one?

All other thoughts and discussion are welcome and encouraged.

 

[Shotaro]

Sending the kid home is, in reality the only thing they CAN do. Sadly in situations like this tragedy the parents are not to blame, they have not mis-treat their child. He has not been abused or hurt in any way to make him commit this crime with intent. It will be a traumatic experience for the family as a whole but wrenching their child away when he needs them most would do far more harm than good.

I think that the Law serves a noble purpose - they have decided that legally anyone under the age of ten is not expected to be either intelligent or aware enough to fully comprehend the difference between right and wrong. Let's also not forget that the deceased in this case MUST have had or left the gun somewhere where the child could access it and although I am not going to be so bold as to say she deserved her death (she did not) the finger of blame rests permanently in her direction.

 

[Mustang Sally]

]Do you agree with the judge's decision to send the boy home just four days after shooting and killing his grandmother?

Yes, because what else can they do? In the American justice system's eagerness to blame someone whenever something bad happens, the person who's truly to blame is already dead, so the authorities can soothe themselves with the knowledge that someone has been punished.

This wasn't a crime; it was an accident......brought about by the actions of an 87-year-old woman who wasn't properly supervising the child she had been charged with protecting.

First of all, what in hell is a woman that age doing with a gun in her purse? Second, how could she leave it where the kid could get hold of it? Third, if the kid had shot himself instead of his grandmother, who'd go to jail?

Okay, so what to do about this? The child and his parents have access to counseling. That's good for all involved, it will help insure that the horrible incident is put in the past where it belongs; that lingering feelings of guilt and remorse are channeled properly instead of being allowed to fester in any of those involved. You want them to counsel the child to make sure he never points a gun at anyone again? Go ahead, but I think he's already learned it.

That's it....that's all you can do. If someone wants to make a case for banning the Grand Theft Auto game for children; go ahead, give it a try.

If you want to try and get TV programs and movies to stop showing people pointing guns at each other so children can't see it on their screens, you can take a stab at that, too, if you want. I doubt any of it will do any good; in an age when inspectors at airports complain that passengers find it amusing to pretend they're aiming a gun at the officials as they pass through the metal detector, I don't see how to convince children to understand that they mustn't shoot their relatives. Shoot-'em-ups are part of the culture.

This was an accident; a combination of events that led to a tragic ending. What's being done about it as involves this family is proper.

 

[justinsayne]

That grandmother is a terrible babysitter

1- she wasn't even watching the kid, she was watching tv while the kid was in the other room

2-Who the fuck in their right mind lets an 8 yr. old play fucking GTA?!?

3-If you're a adult who owns a gun then & is going to be watching children then you should keep your gun locked in a gun safe out of reach of said children, not in your fucking purse where a kid can get it easily.

Obviously the grandmother didn't deserve to be shot to death, even though she did a horrific job of babysitting, though if she had survived I don't think I would ever allow her to babysit the kid again.

This sounds like it was nothing more than a accident, so yeah I agree with sending the kid home to his parents & that he receives consoling. I also think they should take away any video games he has with a M rating, he shouldn't be playing shit like GTA at 8 yr.s old, he should be playing stuff like Mario Bros. & Rachet & Clank.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

"Do you agree with the judge's decision to send the boy home just four days after shooting and killing his grandmother?"

In the grand scheme of things, what else could the judge really do? My initial, gut reaction when I first heard CNN bring it up, before they went to commercial, was to look for someone to blame. Once the story aired a few minutes later and I heard/saw the mentioning of Grand Theft Auto IV, I immediately groaned because I immediately knew where some were going to go with this. Ever since Columbine, various watchdog groups have targeted certain film, television music and video game genres as the reason for the escalation in violent behavior and acts of homicide among children and teenagers. Now I don't think anyone can argue that violent imagery can have a profound effect on human beings, especially human beings who aren't fully developed mentally and emotionally. In my opinion, the problem isn't so much that the violence exists in various media forms, it's that parents and guardians don't do enough to shield their children from this violence. An 8 year old boy has no business playing a game as violent as the Grand Theft Auto series and I have little doubt that he's watched numerous TV shows and movies featuring graphic violence. If parents don't want their children playing those sorts of games, then don't buy them. If you don't want your kids watching violent movies or television shows, then monitor what they watch and change the channel. The VAST majority of these games are bought by adults as most kids don't have the $50-$60 to pay for them. And even if they do have the money, parents/guardians need to step up and actually do what they're supposed to. Don't let them buy the game and look for the game if you suspect that they might have borrowed it or bought it behind your back. Sure you'll piss them off and they'll do the "I hate you" temper tantrums and all that. That goes along with the territory of being a parent and actually parenting. It's not pleasant but raising children isn't all fun & games.

As to whether or not I agree with the judge's decision to send him home after 4 days, what else could he do really? I'm assuming that the boy has been examined by medical professionals, police officers, social workers, psychiatrists, etc. a whole helluva lot since this happened. If there's no evidence or indication of abuse or neglect, then there's no reason for him not to be sent home.

"Is the law that prevents children under the age of ten from being charged, regardless the crime, a good one?"

This is a situation in which the law and the system itself is completely impotent. There's simply no "good" that's going to come out of it no matter what. If they the boy off, or someone else off in a similar situation, with nothing being done, then some people are going to be upset. Sometimes, depending on the situation, it's very easy to identify with those people. However, if a kid is sent to prison for years for a similar crime, and I do mean a kid, then there's a strong possibility of any hope of that child having some sort of future obliterated. In this particular case, he's 8 years old, so how do you approach it? The system doesn't have an answer for a situation like this, it really wasn't designed for it, and nothing that could be done is going to be satisfying. It's just a tragedy that there's no reasonable way around.

Whenever a crime is committed, especially one that causes someone's death, I believe there's an instinctive reasoning popping up in people in which they want to see someone punished. All too often, the zeal for justice morphs into settling for someone to blame whether this someone is responsible or not. In this situation, there's no doubt that the boy killed his grandmother, so there's no set of circumstantial facts that a prosecutor can fiddle with in order to make said facts apply to a suspect. But did he really understand what he was doing? I don't know and can't pretend that I do. I do believe this came about, in large part, due to circumstances that've become all to common in society: parents/guardians failing to actually parent the children under their care.

However, I also don't want to sound like I'm laying it all on the shoulders of Marie Smothers. The woman was 87 years of age and like most grandmothers, I'm sure she relished the prospect of spending time with and watching her grandson. Was it a poor choice given her advanced age and, most likely, physical frailty? Definitely. At the same time, could she have come flat out and said that she wasn't capable of watching her grandson? I suppose she could but, again, I can't think of many grandmothers that would. All things considered, I'm assuming that she was in good health for her age and had no particular issues that the boy's parents felt prohibited her from watching him. I know it's tempting to say that she wasn't even watching him, which that is true, but I've personally never heard of or come across people who have babysat that watch the child every, single, solitary second. She assumed he was playing and as someone who came from a much older generation, she quite possibly didn't know or understand all the various implications exposing children to such violent imagery can cause. It's easier to say that she should have known better but, could she really? How many people GENUINELY believe that their 8 year old grandchild is going to go find a gun, know how to operate it and actually use it to shoot them or someone else? Hindsight is always 20/20.

 

[H33LTurn]

Charging the child would definitively be a horrible idea. What some people who are so gung ho about charging minors fail to understand is that jail/prison is filled with actual dangerous people. Sociopaths, psychopaths, drug dealers, mass murderers and others of the like. What I love and hate at the same time is these juvenile delinquent programs that send kids off to see how horrible prison is and how horrible prisoners behave is that on one hand the child gets a dose of reality and will probably be scared straight. On the other hand, the image may scar the child for life or make them identify with these prisoners. If you just finished accidentally shooting your grandmother at 8 years old, the last place you need to be is a corrections facility surrounded by heartless individuals and the notion that you deserve to be among those kinds of people. I agree, the home might not be the best place for the child right then, but unless those people have other close relatives that can take care of their child (and arent scared to death of what he'll do to them too) then they need to suck it up and nurture their child. Sure, losing a loved one, especially a mother, can be an emotionally taxing situation, but imagine what the child is going through. The kid's entire world must have fallen apart in an instant. Seeking counseling is the best course of action right now and I'm glad that the parents have decided to do just that. Hopefully whoever handles their case has the expertise and the patience to deal with such a sensitive issue.

 

[LSN80]

That's it....that's all you can do. If someone wants to make a case for banning the Grand Theft Auto game for children; go ahead, give it a try.

We don't know the details, so I suppose it would be premature to speculate but I'd argue the case that the parents need to be more selective in what video games they allow their children to play. An 8 year old plays a game where he goes around shooting everyone and everything....and then he shoots his grandmother.

Ultimately, she's to blame. Having a loaded weapon where a child can access it, likely thinking he's playing another 'game', was incredibly dumb on her part. And as a result, she's dead.

But it would be hard for me as a parent to welcome home with open arms the child, however 'innocent', that just shot and killed my mother. From a solely emotional standpoint, it would be troublesome. If this family can do it, more power to them.

But I would worry that lingering resentment would remain from other family members, especially from the mom or dad whose mom was killed. Do I have a better solution? Nope.

Just a tough situation all around.