A child who murders 'cannot be willy-nilly turned loose into society,' judge says
An 11-year-old boy who shot and killed his 8-year-old neighbor in a dispute over puppies “is in desperate need of help,” according to the judge who found the boy delinquent for the offense of murder.
Judge Dennis “Will” Roach of Jefferson County, Tennessee, issued a dispositional order (PDF) on Feb. 2 requiring the boy to be placed in the custody of the state until he reaches age 19, report the Washington Post, the Knoxville News Sentinel, the Associated Press and WATE.
According to the order, the boy shot and killed 8-year-old McKayla Dyer on Oct. 3 after she refused his request to retrieve puppies she owned. The boy was standing inside his mobile home when he asked Dyer and two other children to see the puppies, and he briefly left after he was turned down. He returned with a 12-gauge shotgun and a BB gun.
When the boy said he had guns, Dyer laughed and said they weren’t real. The boy then made sure the gun was loaded and shot the girl from his window, the order says.
Roach wrote that the boy needs treatment and rehabilitation. He “is in desperate need of help, and our society has a great need for [the boy] to receive it,” Roach wrote. “The state of Tennessee should use all reasonable resources to determine why [the boy], an 11-year-old child, chose to kill an 8-year-old child, and to treat and rehabilitate him so that this will not happen again.
“A child who commits first-degree murder cannot be willy-nilly turned loose into society.”
