Texas boy charged for setting special needs child on fire
Source: NY Daily News
A child in Texas allegedly set a 10-year-old special needs boy on fire in a field, leaving him in a coma and covered in severe burns, authorities and relatives said.
The young victim, Kayden Culp, has been on life support at a San Antonio hospital since Sunday. He is being treated for burns on more than 20% of his body.
His mother told the San-Antonio Express-News that Culp, who has speech and hearing problems, thought he was friends with the alleged aggressor even though that boy picked on him.
My son is a special guy, Tristyn Hatchett, 29, said.
He considered these guys his friends, but they would make fun of him and pick on him and tease him. He was usually the brunt of that kind of joke, but he kept playing with them.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/texas-boy-charged-setting-special-child-fire-article-1.2819856
WTF is wrong with people.
apcalc
(4,465 posts)Be rehabilitated? Is this kind of like the young who abuse helpless animals?
I believe there are some serious mental problems with the perpetrator, and this is a possible sign of future abhorrent and aberrant behavior.
Calista241
(5,586 posts)is in the 9-12 year old range, and no, I do not think they should be tried as an adult.
Ideally, someone with this type of incident will receive adequate legal punishment in a juvenile facility, and then be mandated psychiatric counseling for an extended period of time. This type of incident does attract comparisons to the actions of serial killers and torturers.
Helen Borg
(3,963 posts)Makes no sense at all! In general.
marble falls
(57,204 posts)egeorgequi
(20 posts)juxtaposed
(2,778 posts)different story from the local news?
http://www.ksat.com/news/juvenile-charged-with-first-degree-arson-in-burning-10-year-old-boy
Calista241
(5,586 posts)you can accuse the parents of being bad parents, but you'd have to prove that they taught him the exact elements of the crime, and pretty much have it on tape of them saying "first, you douse your victim with gasoline, and then you strike a match."
juxtaposed
(2,778 posts)one could charge the parents and no they do not have to explain how to set a person on fire, they just have to exhibit a distain for a person or ppl. and wish them dead! Leave it up for the kids to create a novel way to do that..
shenmue
(38,506 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)If the person who did this were 16-18, sadly I would say try as an adult.
This is not a good sign for the child who did it. Who gets their jollies from seeing another person burn alive?
It also depends on mental functioning of the child perpetrator - if the IQ relatively low, perhaps the child has delayed mental functioning. Or if the child has been the victim of abuse or neglect, therapy and treatment might be sufficient.
The very young UK atrocity-murderers of the two-year old James Bulger are a mixed result. One was released in 2001 and supposedly has stayed out of trouble.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger
The second was returned for prison on child pornography charges:
https://www.bizarrepedia.com/venables-and-thompson/
He is supposed to be out again.
So did rehab work for one and not the other?
Codeine
(25,586 posts)I have very little to absolutely no belief in the idea of rehabilitation of almost anyone, and none for a person this twisted, regardless of age. I regard it as a virtual certainty that he will eventually harm someone else.
YOHABLO
(7,358 posts)bettyellen
(47,209 posts)turbinetree
(24,720 posts)then there should be no age requirement.
He knew the difference between right and wrong and he made a conscience decision to HURT someone
To the young man in the hospital and his family
Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)legally held responsible. What are you going to do with an 8 year-old murderer?
As they get older I agree that rehab possibilities are diminished, but it is very hard to say a 12 year-old should be written off, or given the same penalty as an adult.
turbinetree
(24,720 posts)My first impression of it was a "DESIGN", which in my opinion makes it more heinous.
Empathy is the question, does this young man have those qualities, time will tell
AllyCat
(16,222 posts)aeroman
(64 posts)I will refrain from calling a 9-12 year old kid Deplorable, but I will say that acorns do not fall too far from their tree.
rivegauche
(601 posts)But I think that a kid like the attacker is probably a psychopath, and there is no cure for that. I would bet that there was one kid who was the ringleader in the abuse, and the others were his minions. The minions were just as guilty, but perhaps the final attack with the fire wouldn't have happened without the psychopath in charge. That kid needs to be locked up in a secure mental ward indefinitely. Psychopaths don't recover, they're damaged beasts and need to be quarantined.
lark
(23,156 posts)He is irredeemable and needs to be kept away from everyone who's not a stone cold murderer. I don't care that he's only 10, this is beyond heinous.
womanofthehills
(8,761 posts)and will always be a psychopath. It's a hard problem because you cannot teach empathy.
Years ago, I when worked in a children's rehab hospital, a small boy came in who was living on the streets with his mother - the tip of his finger had been cut off for a month and this was the first time he was being seen so he was admitted. He was about 5 yrs old, blond, blue eyes and charming. He almost killed the little girl in the hospital room next to his - beat her to a pulp. Hard for me to think this little guy went on to be a standup person.
Old Vet
(2,001 posts)I remember wishing bad things on the punk bastards who would use me as entertainment, I was small, skinny, had blazing red hair, and poor. I wouldn't wish a childhood of being bullied on anyone, It was terrible. But I never had a serious thought of harming any of the bullies. To come up with a plan to splash gas on another person(not to mention disabled) and light it up is beyond the pale. I would bet there's some serious animal abuse somewhere in these kids past. These so-called friends who did this crime need to be locked up and treated professionally for some time. BTW I went from 5'1 weighing 140 in 10th grade to 6'2 weighing in at 205 at 17 the day I graduated jungle training in the military. I wasn't bullied anymore since
MFM008
(19,818 posts)Tall. Overweight. Kids bullied him.
One day he got tired of it and punched the worst offender in the nose.
Kid ran home crying with a bloody nose.
He was never bullied again in school.
He and the kid became friends.
I don't advocate violence but he did what I didn't do. Fought back.
Believe it or not..I was bullied for having to wear glasses.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)in a way that can never heal or be fixed.
The perp should never, ever, ever be allowed to set foot outside a psychiatric detention facility.
Old Vet
(2,001 posts)Thinking what these kids were doing while this child screamed in pain breaks my heart, Even if this poor child KINDA physically heals, The nightmares will stay forever.
romanic
(2,841 posts)The perp sounds like a budding psychopath. I wouldn't put my money on him learning from this, he needs to be tried as an adult for attempted murder.
justiceischeap
(14,040 posts)attempted murder. It makes no sense to me that this would be an arson charge.
Calista241
(5,586 posts)and plan on adding charges as they develop or get results back from evidence tested.
And if the kid dies, they'll change the charges also.
Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)child this age, unless one can get the child to say that he/she intended to kill.
Charges, even holding charges, should be closely fitted to probable cause evidence. The younger the perpetrator, the more chance that the consequence of the act was not foreseen.
Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)"Which in turn resulted in a backflash to ignite the container and the contents of that accelerant, which were then discarded by that individual, which inadvertently, according to everything that we've developed, struck this child," Police Chief David Knight said.
You have to have probable cause to charge.
juxtaposed
(2,778 posts)"We know that these kids, like I said before, are all friends," she said. "He didn't deliberately do this and go over there and throw this gasoline on top of him. You guys heard what they said in there (news conference). They were messing with it (gasoline), so somebody went this way, and it splashed everywhere."
http://www.ksat.com/news/juvenile-charged-with-first-degree-arson-in-burning-10-year-old-boy
Judi Lynn
(160,621 posts)I always believed "arson" is used in charges involving property.
GOLGO 13
(1,681 posts)It's a miracle that the poor boy survived. He will never have a normal life again. That walking evil will kill eventually.
Greywing
(1,124 posts)I'd encourage other people to do the same. The boy did not deliberately light the victim on fire ... read the story. It's just a friggin tragedy and I hope Culp recovers.