Boy Charged in Fatal Fire Released to Relative

[flashl]

A judge Monday ordered that a 10-year-old boy accused of deliberately setting a fire that killed five people -- including his mother and sister -- be released from a juvenile detention center to the custody of his maternal grandmother.

"He's also a victim," Darke County Juvenile Judge Michael McClurg said to a packed hearing room, referring to the deaths of family members.

The boy had been held at a juvenile detention center in nearby Troy. Coming out of the hearing room, he smiled and waved at relatives who called out his name. The judge restricted the boy to his grandmother's home.

Read More ...

[LisaL]

1. What a confusing case. On one hand, it's easy to get the child

to confess to something he didn't do. On the other hand, those are very serious allegations.

[damntexdem]

6. Confessions by minors are just not strong evidence.

[CatWoman]

2. this is the same thing that happened to Betty Shabazz

http://www.cnn.com/US/9706/23/shabazz.final/index.html

[LisaL]

3. What happened with the 12 year old in that case?

[CatWoman]

5. ...

http://www.cnn.com/US/9706/01/shabazz.pm/index.html

and:

Following the headlines, Qubilah returned to life outside of the public eye. This comfort did not last long, however, because in 1997, Shabazz's son, Malcolm, was accused of setting a fire that resulted in the death of his grandmother, Betty Shabazz. Betty Shabazz had suffered burns over 80% of her body and remained in intensive care for three weeks, until she died on June 23 of that year. Her grandson was later sentenced to eighteen months in juvenile detention for manslaughter.

http://media.www.thehilltoponline.com/media/storage/paper590/news/2005/12/02/NationWorld/A.Look.At.History.Malcolm.Xs.Daughter.Qubilah.Shabazz-1119611.shtml

[Selatius]

4. I won't speak on this case until a formal police investigation is conducted.

If the boy was interrogated by the police, a big question from a legal standpoint is where is the interrogation taped. Was it even taped at all? Was there a lawyer there present? And what of the evidence collected at the scene of the fire? What does that evidence say?

[flashl]

7. Here is more from the article ...

Police say the boy confessed to setting the fire but did not mean for anyone to die. Authorities have not said how the fire was started in this western Ohio 1city of some 13,000 people.

His attorney has said the boy was pressured during questioning by police and that he will seek to have the confession barred from evidence.

[Selatius]

8. That part of the article is specifically why I even raised those questions.

As it stands, the questions remain unanswered. Was this boy alone when questioned? Was the interrogation taped? Was there a lawyer there? Did the boy know his rights? These are giant questions.

[renie408]

9. I think based on the fact that he is 10 years old, he CAN'T truly understand his rights.

I don't think any 'interrogation' of a ten year old can be fair.

As far as I am concerned (and I have two kids- 11&16), a ten year old cannot adquately understand the consequences of his actions well enough to be charged with murder. Period.

[sandnsea]

12. Kids don't understand permanence

I agree. Besides the point, fire starting is a true compulsive mental disorder, which sounds like this child may have had. If starting a fire that gets out of control is the equivalent of murder, well there's a lot of murderers walking around free.

[flashl]

13. I got the impression HE wanted to die. n/t

[renie408]

15. They really don't.

We live on a farm and have lots of animals. About two years ago we had to have one of our old dogs put down due to cancer. I was surprised that my daughter (who was about 9 1/2 at the time) was so non-reactive. It was maybe three weeks after the dog died that she burst into tears one night before she went to bed. It had taken three weeks for it to finally sink in to her that he was GONE and not coming back.

[sandnsea]

16. Sounds like my youngest

We had a house fire and my husband was injured. It took him two weeks to be able to ask whether daddy was going to be able to walk again. He carried that around all that time, I felt so bad for him. He was 7. Their sense of time is completely different from ours. I don't think we remember that it was different, but I'm not sure we really retain a sense of the subtleties of how we perceived the world around us.

[flashl]

17. Re: this article. A comment from a website

"At some point we're going to have to realize that not all children are sweet little babes. Some are born psychopaths and always will be. This kid needs to be kept out of the larger society where you can bet he's going to do ever more damage as he gets older."

This person seems to have given up on mankind.

[flashl]

10. In a similar article on same subject ...

It says attorney wants charges dropped.

[sandnsea]

11. In Illinois, it was likely taped

That was one of the civil rights laws relating to the death penalty that Obama got passed. Murder interrogations have to be taped. I would hope it applies to children as well as adults.

[AngryOldDem]

14. This is a very tragic case

This happened in Greenville, Ohio, a very small farm town. This is the worst thing that has happened to that community in perhaps forever, and when it was found out that a boy set the fire, it was devastating.

Not much has been said about the boy, other than that he lost a close male relative (don't think it was his dad) to AIDS recently. Whether he acted out of grief, or rage, no one knows.

He obviously needs help. I hope he gets committed to a juvenile pyschiatric facility so that he gets the help he clearly and desperately needs, rather than being sent to a juvenile penal institution.