15-year-old kills his entire family

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http://www.yahoo.com/s/799134

All over a stupid argument with his dad that he COULD HAVE worked out.


But no. Four innocent people are dead now

How odd.

That is just so incredibly tragic and sad.

Yuck....

I just hope no one argues for the death penalty. I hate when people start in with the "off with his head" mentality. Destroying more life will accomplish nothing. Instead, the boy needs to be studied by criminologists and other scientists. Social factors play a huge role, genetics are involved as well, but society needs to better understand the social factors which contribute to such states of mind since it is the social factors which we have better control of at this time. The human mind is complex, and it is also fragile. The more we know about the social conditions from which criminals are bred, the lives of the criminals themselves, the better chance we have as a society to begin introducing changes to prevent more children from becoming homicidal and/ or suicidal in the future. Humans are basically encouraged to mate at will in a society - and yet we collectively fail to provide healthy social environments for all these babies we're bringing into the world. For an "advanced species" we sure seem incompetent in areas like morality, parenting, and education.

AS he is under 18 the most he can get is LWOP but that is still obviously a severe sentence

15 seems pretty young to be charging him as an adult.

I'm not encouraging murder or violence, but who says he could have worked it out? The article doesn't even say what the argument was.

"It's hard to believe someone could do this," Brooke Kebaugh, 16, said. (from article)

It's not hard to believe if they tried. How exactly could they have 'worked it out'? Even in families that look like they are perfect, who knows what goes on behind their doors. The article mentioned that he was a guy known in a church, and a scout leader. If verbal abuse would have been happening, amung other things, any child certainly would have felt a need to 'keep quiet' because of his status. (not that it happened. We have no proof.)

Something had to already be very wrong for the teen to kill, long before the fight happened. Where it came from, however, we might not ever know. There could be many reasons he got angry enough to do it. There have been some fights amung family adults, reported on news channels sometimes, where a 'fight' ended up in death or failed physical assault. When they say it's because of a fight, it can be anything from yelling some, to the worser end. I know for myself how far it can go, just with the verbal.

Some fights can force people to their very breaking point. I've been screamed at to my breaking point and lost it, it's a horrible experiance. Didn't kill anyone, though. He is guilty of killing them all, so he will of course need to be punished accordingly.

Weak.

The deth penalty's out of the question anyway, since he's a minor.

I lived in that town when I was in high school.

Why do you say that? I think you're underestimating how violent people can be. When people get upset, they often become violent. Very often someone's first reaction will be a desire to harm a person, if not to kill them. They just usually don't go that far because of social pressure not to do so. Dehumanizing a person makes them easier to harm/kill, and a constant ongoing argument can have that effect.

Sure, he may be guilty of killing them. Still, I don't think you can say it's entirely his fault or because of something that's wrong with him (unless there's more information to suggest that's the case). Perhaps in a better situation he never would have thought to do it. I think he needs help, not punishment.

I agree.
A sane person, especially a teenager wouldn't kill. Obviously, theres mental illness involved...whether it's depression, anger management problems, or something more serious...I don't believe that the boy was 100% sane at the time when he killed his family. Well, thats just my personal opinion...but think about it, if you had an arguement with your father, would you kill your family?
...I know for sure that I wouldn't.

I agree with this.

I know I wouldn't do such a thing either... and I'm hardly sane right now.

Well, he wasn't autistic, and there's no mention of violent video games, so obviously, his violence must have been caused by his being an Eagle Scout! </sarcasm>

(It's just that usually, when this sort of story breaks, the first thing they look for is if the juvenile killer played violent video games, then they look for any other "abnormalities" to blame it on - of course no child is ever mentally ill, and undergoing a psychotic break! Someone or something must have caused this! Let's sue!)

If the supposed argument was with the father, why did he have to kill everyone else in the family, too?