UNITED STATES - An 8 year old boy in Arizona has been charged with two counts of premeditated murder after he gunned down his father and another man with a .22 rifle, St. Johns Police Chief Roy Melnick said. The boy has since confessed to the murder, but investigators are still trying to determine if the deaths were accident or intentional.
The crime occurred on Wednesday when the boy’s father, 29-year-old Vincent Romero, and 39-year-old Timothy Romans were fatally shot. Police reportedly arrived at the crime scene shortly after the shootings took place. One victim was just outside the front door, while the other was found dead in an upstairs room. Police arrived at the scene at about 5 p.m. Wednesday, within minutes after the neighbors reported hearing gunfire.
Police Chief Melnick refused to discuss the probable motives that led the child to commit the horrendous crimes or how he came to have the gun.
The cases of juvenile murderers are very rare and also extremely difficult for the justice system. According to FBI's Uniform Crime Report lists, there were no murder defendants under the age of 9 in the past 3 years.
A quite similar case happened in 1998 in Illinois when a 7-year-old and an 8-year-old were accused of killing an 11-year-old. They were both exonerated as specialist tend to consider the juvenile murderers as products of abuse.
Incidents like this, school shooting and the like, will fuel the belief that banning guns and creating tighter controls around children and guns will make a difference in the USA. Remember that America has more guns than cars, people or even pets. Americans LOVE their guns. See Americans buying guns like crazy after Obama win.
POSSIBLE MOTIVES:
The boy walked in on his father, Vincent Romero, and his friend Timothy Romans kissing or having gay sex together. The boy, confused as to what was happening or perhaps homophobic, went and got a gun and shot them both.
Or... the men had sexually abused the boy, and this was revenge.
SCHOOL SHOOTING IN DETROIT
October 16th - A shooting in a primary school in Detroit, Michigan, Thursday left one high-school student dead and three others injured, police said.
The students were from Henry Ford High School and were sitting on a lawn of a primary school near to their own school, Detroit Police Chief James Barren told reporters.
An unknown man came out of a car and shot them, before fleeing with his car.
One 16-year-old male student was killed while three others were seriously injured and still in critical condition.
A witness heard at least 12 or 13 gunshots and then he saw one male student was shot in the eye. The gunman is still at large and police is trying to find his motive.
A 22-year-old gunman who killed 11 people before killing himself Tuesday at a vocational school in Finland left notes saying he hated humankind, police said.
The shooter, who was a student at the school, left two handwritten notes in the dormitory, saying he had planned the attack since 2002 and he hated humanity, police said.
He also wrote that the solution was a Walther 22, referring to the .22-calibre pistol he used in the attack.
He fired on students who were taking an exam and then shot himself in the head, He was taken to hospital, where he died hours later.
The shooting occurred just before 11 a.m. local time at the Kauhajoki School of Hospitality, 290 kilometres northwest of Helsinki.
Finland's Interior Minister Anne Holmlund said the man had been questioned by police on Monday but was released because police had no legal grounds to detain him.
Holmlund said the man was detained briefly because of YouTube postings in which he is shown firing a handgun at what appears to be a shooting range.
She said the man had obtained the licence for the gun in August.
Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen declared Wednesday as a day of mourning for the victims, with flags to fly at half-mast, and he expressed condolences to their families.
"We have experienced a tragic day," he said.
Reijo Lindroos, chief correspondent for Radio Finland, told CBC News he believed many of the victims were women because the shooting took place in a domestic sciences building. Dozens of shots fired
Witnesses said the gunman was hooded as he made his way into the school and panic spread as he opened fire.
"Within a short space of time, I heard several dozen rounds of shots. In other words, it was an automatic pistol," school janitor Jukka Forsberg told broadcaster YLE.
"I saw some female students who were wailing and moaning, and one managed to escape out of the back door."
The attacker walked into the school armed with a pistol and what appeared to be explosive devices that were used to start a fire, police spokesman Jari Neulaniemi said. Some of those he killed were burned beyond recognition, Neulaniemi said.
Jussi Muotio, superintendent of the Kauhajoki police, said: "The incident is over now."
Finnish tabloid Ilta-Sanomat identified the gunman as Matti Juhani Saari, but police would say only that he was born in 1986 and was a student at the school.
In one of the YouTube videos brought to the attention of police, a young man wearing a leather jacket fires several shots with a handgun in rapid succession, Finnish media reported.
The posting, made five days before Tuesday's shooting, gives its location as Kauhajoki.
The posting includes the message: "Whole life is war and whole life is pain. And you will fight alone in your personal war."
Nearly a year ago, gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen killed eight people and himself at a school in southern Finland. Police at the time said Auvinen, 18, was bullied and a social outcast.
Auvinen killed six students, a school nurse and the principal before killing himself with a gunshot to the head on Nov. 7, 2007.
Police have said Auvinen left a suicide note for his family and posted videos to YouTube before his attack.
There are 1.6 million firearms in Finland. After the shooting last year, the government pledged to raise the minimum age for buying guns from 15 to 18 but made no promises about making major changes its gun laws.
Feb. 2, 1996 Moses Lake, Wash. Two students and one teacher killed, one other wounded when 14-year-old Barry Loukaitis opened fire on his algebra class.
March 13, 1996 Dunblane, Scotland 16 children and one teacher killed at Dunblane Primary School by Thomas Hamilton, who then killed himself. 10 others wounded in attack.
Feb. 19, 1997 Bethel, Alaska Principal and one student killed, two others wounded by Evan Ramsey, 16.
March 1997 Sanaa, Yemen Eight people (six students and two others) at two schools killed by Mohammad Ahman al-Naziri.
Oct. 1, 1997 Pearl, Miss. Two students killed and seven wounded by Luke Woodham, 16, who was also accused of killing his mother. He and his friends were outcasts who were teased and students claimed they worshiped Satan.
Dec. 1, 1997 West Paducah, Ky. Three students killed, five wounded by Michael Carneal, 14, as they participated in a prayer circle at Heath High School.
Dec. 15, 1997 Stamps, Ark. Two students wounded. Colt Todd, 14, was hiding in the woods when he shot the students as they stood in the parking lot.
March 24, 1998 Jonesboro, Ark. Four students and one teacher killed, ten others wounded outside as Westside Middle School emptied during a false fire alarm. Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, shot at their classmates and teachers from the woods.
April 24, 1998 Edinboro, Pa. One teacher, John Gillette, killed, two students wounded at a dance at James W. Parker Middle School. Andrew Wurst, 14, was charged.
May 19, 1998 Fayetteville, Tenn. One student killed in the parking lot at Lincoln County High School three days before he was to graduate. The victim was dating the ex-girlfriend of his killer, 18-year-old honor student Jacob Davis.
May 21, 1998 Springfield, Ore. Two students killed, 22 others wounded in the cafeteria at Thurston High School by 15-year-old Kip Kinkel. Kinkel had been arrested and released a day earlier for bringing a gun to school. His parents were later found dead at home.
June 15, 1998 Richmond, Va. One teacher and one guidance counselor wounded by a 14-year-old boy in the school hallway.
April 20, 1999 Littleton, Colo. 14 students (including killers) and one teacher killed, 23 others wounded at Columbine High School in the nation's deadliest school shooting. Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, had plotted for a year to kill at least 500 and blow up their school. At the end of their hour-long rampage, they turned their guns on themselves.
April 28, 1999 Taber, Alberta, Canada One student killed, one wounded at W. R. Myers High School in first fatal high school shooting in Canada in 20 years. The suspect, a 14-year-old boy, had dropped out of school after he was severely ostracized by his classmates.
May 20, 1999 Conyers, Ga. Six students injured at Heritage High School by Thomas Solomon, 15, who was reportedly depressed after breaking up with his girlfriend.
Nov. 19, 1999 Deming, N.M. Victor Cordova Jr., 12, shot and killed Araceli Tena, 13, in the lobby of Deming Middle School.
Dec. 6, 1999 Fort Gibson, Okla. Four students wounded as Seth Trickey, 13, opened fire with a 9mm semiautomatic handgun at Fort Gibson Middle School.
Dec. 7, 1999 Veghel, Netherlands One teacher and three students wounded by a 17-year-old student.
Feb. 29, 2000 Mount Morris Township, Mich. Six-year-old Kayla Rolland shot dead at Buell Elementary School near Flint, Mich. The assailant was identified as a six-year-old boy with a .32-caliber handgun.
March 2000 Branneburg, Germany One teacher killed by a 15-year-old student, who then shot himself. The shooter has been in a coma ever since.
March 10, 2000 Savannah, Ga. Two students killed by Darrell Ingram, 19, while leaving a dance sponsored by Beach High School.
May 26, 2000 Lake Worth, Fla. One teacher, Barry Grunow, shot and killed at Lake Worth Middle School by Nate Brazill, 13, with .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol on the last day of classes.
Sept. 26, 2000 New Orleans, La. Two students wounded with the same gun during a fight at Woodson Middle School.
Jan. 17, 2001 Baltimore, Md. One student shot and killed in front of Lake Clifton Eastern High School.
Jan. 18, 2001 Jan, Sweden One student killed by two boys, ages 17 and 19.
March 5, 2001 Santee, Calif. Two killed and 13 wounded by Charles Andrew Williams, 15, firing from a bathroom at Santana High School.
March 7, 2001 Williamsport, Pa. Elizabeth Catherine Bush, 14, wounded student Kimberly Marchese in the cafeteria of Bishop Neumann High School; she was depressed and frequently teased.
March 22, 2001 Granite Hills, Calif. One teacher and three students wounded by Jason Hoffman, 18, at Granite Hills High School. A policeman shot and wounded Hoffman.
March 30, 2001 Gary, Ind. One student killed by Donald R. Burt, Jr., a 17-year-old student who had been expelled from Lew Wallace High School.
Nov. 12, 2001 Caro, Mich. Chris Buschbacher, 17, took two hostages at the Caro Learning Center before killing himself.
Jan. 15, 2002 New York, N.Y. A teenager wounded two students at Martin Luther King Jr. High School.
Feb. 19, 2002 Freising, Germany Two killed in Eching by a man at the factory from which he had been fired; he then traveled to Freising and killed the headmaster of the technical school from which he had been expelled. He also wounded another teacher before killing himself.
April 26, 2002 Erfurt, Germany 13 teachers, two students, and one policeman killed, ten wounded by Robert Steinhaeuser, 19, at the Johann Gutenberg secondary school. Steinhaeuser then killed himself.
April 29, 2002 Vlasenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina One teacher killed, one wounded by Dragoslav Petkovic, 17, who then killed himself.
October 28, 2002 Tucson, Ariz. Robert S. Flores Jr., 41, a student at the nursing school at the University of Arizona, shot and killed three female professors and then himself.
April 14, 2003 New Orleans, La. One 15-year-old killed, and three students wounded at John McDonogh High School by gunfire from four teenagers (none were students at the school). The motive was gang-related.
April 24, 2003 Red Lion, Pa. James Sheets, 14, killed principal Eugene Segro of Red Lion Area Junior High School before killing himself.
Sept. 24, 2003 Cold Spring, Minn. Two students are killed at Rocori High School by John Jason McLaughlin, 15.
Sept. 28, 2004 Carmen de Patagones, Argentina Three students killed and 6 wounded by a 15-year-old Argentininan student in a town 620 miles south of Buenos Aires.
March 21, 2005 Red Lake, Minn. Jeff Weise, 16, killed grandfather and companion, then arrived at school where he killed a teacher, a security guard, 5 students, and finally himself, leaving a total of 10 dead.
Nov. 8, 2005 Jacksboro, Tenn. One 15-year-old shot and killed an assistant principal at Campbell County High School and seriously wounded two other administrators.
Aug. 24, 2006 Essex, Vt. Christopher Williams, 27, looking for his ex-girlfriend at Essex Elementary School, shot two teachers, killing one and wounding another. Before going to the school, he had killed the ex-girlfriend's mother.
Sept. 13, 2006 Montreal, Canada Kimveer Gill, 25, opened fire with a semiautomatic weapon at Dawson College. Anastasia De Sousa, 18, died and more than a dozen students and faculty were wounded before Gill killed himself.
Sept. 27, 2006 Bailey, Colo. Adult male held six students hostage at Platte Canyon High School and then shot and killed Emily Keyes, 16, and himself.
Sept. 29, 2006 Cazenovia, Wis. A 15-year-old student shot and killed Weston School principal John Klang.
Oct. 3, 2006 Nickel Mines, Pa. 32-year-old Carl Charles Roberts IV entered the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School and shot 10 schoolgirls, ranging in age from 6 to 13 years old, and then himself. Five of the girls and Roberts died.
Jan. 3, 2007 Tacoma, Wash. Douglas Chanthabouly, 18, shot fellow student Samnang Kok, 17, in the hallway of Henry Foss High School.
April 16, 2007 Blacksburg, Va. A 23-year-old Virginia Tech student, Cho Seung-Hui, killed two in a dorm, then killed 30 more 2 hours later in a classroom building. His suicide brought the death toll to 33, making the shooting rampage the most deadly in U.S. history. Fifteen others were wounded.
Sept. 21, 2007 Dover, Del. A Delaware State Univesity Freshman, Loyer D. Brandon, shot and wounded two other Freshman students on the University campus. Brandon is being charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless engagement, as well as a gun charge.
Oct. 10, 2007 Cleveland, Ohio A 14-year-old student at a Cleveland high school, Asa H. Coon, shot and injured two students and two teachers before he shot and killed himself. The victims' injuries were not life-threatening.
Nov. 7, 2007 Tuusula, Finland An 18-year-old student in southern Finland shot and killed five boys, two girls, and the female principal at Jokela High School. At least 10 others were injured. The gunman shot himself and died from his wounds in the hospital.
Feb. 8, 2008 Baton Rouge, Louisiana A nursing student shot and killed two women and then herself in a classroom at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge.
Feb. 11, 2008 Memphis, Tennessee A 17-year-old student at Mitchell High School shot and wounded a classmate in gym class.
Feb. 12, 2008 Oxnard, California A 14-year-old boy shot a student at E.O. Green Junior High School causing the 15-year-old victim to be brain dead.
Feb. 14, 2008 DeKalb, Illinois Gunman kills five students and then himself, and wounds 17 more when he opens fire on a classroom at Northern Illinois University. The gunman, Stephen P. Kazmierczak, was identified as a former graduate student at the university in 2007.
COLUMBIA, S.C. – A 4-year-old girl shot herself in the chest yesterday after snatching her grandmother's handgun from the woman's purse while riding in a shopping cart at a Sam's Club store, authorities said.
Store workers grabbed first-aid materials off store shelves to help the grandmother as she cradled the wounded child near the store's pharmacy. "Everyone at Sam's Club is deeply saddened by today's tragedy," Tara Stewart, state spokeswoman for Wal-Mart and Sam's Club, said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the little girl and her family."
The girl was rushed to a hospital in critical condition and is recovering after surgery, said police department spokesman Brick Lewis. Hospital officials would not release her condition after the operation.
Lewis said the grandmother, Donna Hutto Williamson, has a permit to carry a concealed weapon and the purse containing the small-calibre handgun was in the cart near the child. The 47-year-old Williamson, of Salley, was not immediately charged with a crime.
Williamson, a South Carolina magistrate, was distraught after the shooting, her mother-in-law said.
"The grandmother is just beating herself up," said Inease Williamson, 68. "She is just so upset. Everyone is upset."
Officials said the shooting, which was captured on store surveillance cameras, appeared to be accidental. Lewis said police would not release the video.
The store was closed while police investigated the shooting. It reopened Monday afternoon.
Concealed weapons permit holders in South Carolina are not allowed to carry weapons into buildings that prohibit it, or into government buildings, schools and daycare facilities, among other places.
It was not immediately clear whether the store had a sign posted that prohibited carrying guns inside.
TOKYO – Tomohiro Kato, a man arrested for killing seven people in a knife rampage on a crowded Tokyo shopping street posted dozens of warning messages on the Internet in the hours leading up to the attack.
Japanese police arrested a 25-year-old blood-spattered man at the scene for driving a truck into a crowd of Sunday shoppers in Akihabara, Tokyo's biggest electronics shopping district, and then walking down the street stabbing people at random.
Passers by prayed and dropped flowers on Monday at the scene of the attack, as a bewildered Japan tried to make sense of the latest in a series of random acts of violence.
Before the rampage in Akihabara, the arrested man, Tomohiro Kato, had warned on an Internet site that "I will kill people in Akihabara".
"I will crash my car and when the car becomes unusable, I will use a knife. Good-bye, everyone!," the man wrote on his Internet site early Sunday morning.
Tokyo police had heard of similar posts on another Internet site, but could not stop the attacks.
"I'm used to acting like a good person. I can fool everyone easily," Kato wrote, adding he was struggling to make friends.
In the last of more than two dozen Internet postings, he wrote a few minutes before the truck was rammed into the crowd: "The time has come."
Sunday's attack followed the killing of one person in a random stabbing outside a train station north of Tokyo in March, while five were hurt in a similar attack in January.
Also in March, a teenager pushed a stranger under a train in western Japan, saying he just wanted to kill someone.
The latest attack sparked talk among Tokyo residents of failing communities and declining morality in a country proud of its low crime rate.
"Recently, peoples' relationships have become strained," said 29-year-old Taishi Ikeda, who works in the publishing industry. "There's no-one to talk to when you're troubled."
The suspect in Sunday's attack lived alone and had a temporary job at a car factory. He was reported to be a regular visitor to Akihabara, known for high tech electronic products sold alongside anime cartoon goods and cafes where waitresses dress as French maids.
Japan's obsession with exam grades made many feel like failures and the decline of the extended family had also cut support for troubled youngsters, said Jinsuke Kageyama, a criminal psychologist at Tokyo Institute of Technology.
"Japan has entered a period of selfishness. People have the feeling that they can do anything," he said.
"But when these people fail to fulfill themselves in socially acceptable ways, they are treated as losers and their frustration builds up," he added.
"A series of disappointments can lead them to try to regain their sense of self through crime."
Tackling the root causes of such attacks would be a complex task, and harsher penalties would likely not be helpful, he said.
Total reported crime has been falling for five years, but Japan has toughened up sentencing and increased the pace at which it carries out executions in recent months under Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama, a supporter of the death penalty.
"If they have the urge to commit suicide, people will do these things in countries that have the death penalty," Kageyama said.
Some members of the public pointed to an economic downturn and government policy as reasons for rising frustration.
"Politicians don't think about the people, they raise taxes and change the health care system," said Kentaro Inoue, a 56-year-old worker for an architectural firm. "I think that's what breeds this violent behaviour. People begin to hate society when they can't succeed."
This blog doesn't post very often unless we hear about something particularly violent event in a domestic setting. Perhaps we should be thankful for that.
UNITED STATES - An 8 year old boy in Arizona has been charged with two counts of premeditated murder after he gunned down his father and another man with a .22 rifle, St. Johns Police Chief Roy Melnick said. The boy has since confessed to the murder, but investigators are still trying to determine if the deaths were accident or intentional.
