PSYCHOLOGISTS were today preparing to examine an eight-year-old American boy in order to discover what led him to shoot dead his father and another man with a hunting rifle.
Prosecutors in Arizona said that the boy, who has appeared in court charged with two counts of premeditated murder, used a .22-calibre rifle and stopped to reload the weapon before shooting each victim at least four times.
Judge Michael Roca of th
e Apache County Superior Court ordered a psychological evaluation of the alleged killer, who had no disciplinary problems at school and who had shown no outward signs of any trouble.
"Who would think an eight-year-old boy could kill two adults?" said Roy Melnick, police chief for the town of St Johns, after the boy was arrested.
"He's eight years old. He just doesn't decide one day that he's going to shoot his father and shoot his father's friend for no reason. Something led up to this. That's what makes this case somewhat puzzling."
The boy arrived for a court hearing in handcuffs and ankle shackles but Judge Roca ordered him to be uncuffed after a complaint from Benjamin Brewer, his lawyer. He sat beside his mother and fidgeted and yawned through the proceedings, looking more like a restless schoolboy than a murder suspect.
Brad Carlyon, deputy attorney for Apache County, said that the boy was familiar with weapons because his father used to take him on regular trips into the desert to shoot prairie dogs.
At first, he added, police considered the boy a victim because he told them he had discovered the bodies of his father, Vincent Romero, 29, and Timothy Romans, 39, who rented a room from the family.
But towards the end of an hour-long interview, he said, the boy broke down and confessed to killing the men at their home in St Johns.
Chief Melnick said that his officers had been called to the house in the past to investigate allegations of domestic violence, but now doubted abuse was a motive.
The child's birth mother, who lives in Mississippi, is estranged from his father, who remarried in September. The boy's stepmother was not in town when the shooting took place.
Neighbours said that Mr Romero and his son were "like two peas in a pod" and were often seen playing baseball in the street. "They were good people," Amber Smith said.
BACKGROUNDDESPITE America's relaxed gun laws, killings by young children remain rare, according to FBI figures. There were at least three cases of homicide by children younger than 11 each year from 2003 to 2005, down from 15 in 2002.
One expert said that, from 1976 to 2005, there were only 62 cases in the US in which a child aged seven or eight was arrested for murder. Only two of those cases involved a child killing a parent. Children younger than seven who commit killings are not charged in most US states.
"It's really hard to even comprehend," said Dr Kathleen Heide, professor of criminology at the University of South Florida in Tampa. "The wrinkle here is that this boy is so young it could possibly be immaturity and impulsivity."
In children as young as eight, parts of the brain that weigh decisions and consequences are so underdeveloped that a child might not understand the concept of death.
