Jealous 11YO Charged For Killing His Dad's Pregnant Girlfriend

[tropicsgoddess]

This kid is being tried as an adult for shooting his father's pregnant girlfriend. Seriously, wtf is with kids these days?!!

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/orl-boy-...,4138226.story

[Sylvia727]

The boy owns his own shotgun, keeps it in his bedroom, and told people that he wanted to kill the woman. He's not the cause of this problem. He's the victim of extreme negligence. When your 11 year old tells you that he wants to kill your girlfriend, you take him to therapy, you don't leave him alone in the house with the 7 year old and 4 year old daughters of his target. This is the kind of parental abuse/abandonment that creates serial killers.

I hope this kid gets some serious therapy and rehabilitation in juvie, but he's likely doomed.

[AdminAssistant]

I agree, Sylvia. There's a good chance they there was so much attention on the girlfriend, the younger kids, and the baby that the 11 year old felt completely ignored. If the child is found guilty, I hope he gets some serious help.

[AFPheonix]

Even then, he's probably a sociopath. Sucks, I guess the moral of the story is to watch out for weird mental stuff your kid may do, and for the love of god, invest in a gun safe and use the damn thing.

[Seshat]

There is a definite egocentric tendency in pre-teens and teenagers. It's a normal developmental stage.

I'd say - given the scant information in the news article - that there was negligence there in the part of the adults. The kid should have (and possibly was) had counselling. School counsellor, psychologist, maybe a priest from a religion which provides psychological/counselling training to their priests.

And guns should, IMO, always be kept in locked cabinets with adults having the keys.

[Machero]

The trouble is that some people are not aware of what is in front of them. Before the girlfriend came along, the father and son probably did everything together. It's no surprise that this kid was incredibly jealous of the attention that the girlfriend was getting from his father.

Kids don't know any better. Did he know what he was doing? It was clearly pre-meditated, since the statement made by the child was told to the child of the victims brother in law. Or then again, kids talk a lot of shit.

The world is a fucked up place. Guarenteed people will go out and find blame all over for why this happened, losing sight of the fact that this kid had the tools to make a decision that he shouldn't have made.

Everyone is affected by this horrible act. Whether you know it or not.

[Boozy]

Even then, he's probably a sociopath.

The armchair psychiatrist in me agrees with you.

Sometimes shit happens. No one really knows if sociopaths are made or born, but most of the psychiatric community agrees that they're not curable.

You can't look at these extreme cases and say, "What's wrong with kids these days?" There are billions of children in the world, and the overwhelming majority of them don't commit murder and likely never will.

[Seshat]

The armchair psychologist in me says that he's still in an egocentric stage of psychological development. In the egocentric stages, all children show signs of potential sociopathy.

The early-detection for sociopathy and psychopathy usually rests on whether children exhibit patterns of extreme behaviour. One-off incidents, even really extreme one-off incidents, may just be the result of normal egocentricity.

So the armchair psychologist in me says 'insufficient information'.

And also, don't give a kid both provocation and opportunity. That's just asking for trouble.