Sociopathic Children
Can children be self-interested sociopaths? Will they shoot just because they want to? Or because of some perceived gain?
The courts thought they'd seen a true psychopath when they found Jasmine Richardson "a 12-year-old girl "guilty of brutally murdering her parents and younger brother in Alberta. She had run off with her 23-year-old boyfriend, Jeremy, whom her parents disliked. She was given the maximum penalty for a child under 14: ten years.
And then there was 14-year-old Michael Hernandez, who was convicted of the premeditated murder of a classmate. He'd lured him into a bathroom then stabbed him and slit his throat. While he had appeared "so normal to his friends and "so polite to his teachers, his journals revealed a youngster fixated on violence and committed to plans of mass murder.
And there's the Bulger Boy Murder in Northern England in 1993, which I personally remember quite well. I still feel a physical revulsion in writing about it. Two otherwise ordinary 10-year-old boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, abducted two-year-old James Bulger from a local shopping area, wandered with him for hours before they beat him to death and left him on railroad tracks. They covered his head with rocks. No explanation was offered. None was ever found.
And as of November 3rd, 2009, the District Attorney has formally charged the little boy in Belen with first degree murder.
This article will continue tomorrow with Just Another Kid Losing It With A Gun: PART II
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).