I have to disagree with a couple of posts here...
B.N.Real said:
This nonsense of putting ourselves in the mind of a killer to 'understand' why he did the horrible crime he did has to stop.
People murder people because they DECIDE to do that.
44 AMP said:
I may be getting cold and callous in my old age, but I simply don't care about why the kid did it. At all. I don't even care if he knew it was wrong. He did it (assuming the courts so rule), and therefore should be removed from society, permanently.
Isn't this like saying we should toss out self-defense as a justification for homicide? Or defense of another person? Re-read your statements in light of it being an act of self-defense (which we know it was not, but humor me).
Based on what we know from public media sources, it would appear that the kid had emotional problems with his father and the woman over the arrival of a step-sister. And at 11 years old, some kids think this means a parent will no longer love them anymore.
But stepping away from the particulars of this case, there are situations where such a homicide might be defensible.
There have been cases where an abused child or spouse finally strikes back, sometimes with fatal consequences. Years of abuse mount until something triggers the victim to lash out.
We saw it here in the bay area not long ago. A 10 year old boy living in an upscale neighborhood and a lavish house whacked his step-mom five times with a fireplace poker and she nearly died. Why? Because she destroyed his first-place school art project -- a relaistic & detailed pencil drawing of a space station -- by throwing it into the fireplace and calling it "worthless, stupid trash".
Mind you when police investigated they called the house "luxuriously lavish" -- except for the boy's room which was labeled
monastic. The parent's room boasted a canopy bed, deep pile carpeting, 3 phones, a large TV, stereo system and even a small fridge. The bathroom had a jacuzzi spa tub,
heated toilet seat and towel rack, dressing table, marble counters and gold-toned faucets. But the boy's room held a single pine bed, with white sheets and a thin blanket, a pine dresser, a small used second-hand lamp table sitting on a bare wood floor. He had six sets of clothing (nothing more or less), two pair of shoes and a pullover sweatshirt. No books, no rugs, not even curtains. They also noticed there were no toys, no pictures or posters on the walls, no comic books, no baseball cards, no sports equipment, nothing. Nothing said a young boy lived in that house.
Some parents don't deserve children. Some that have them deserve what they get.