8-year-old confesses to shooting father, worker

Source: Agencies  |   2008-11-20  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

AN eight-year-old boy in the United States, accused in the deaths of his father and another man, gave police conflicting accounts about the shootings, before admitting to firing at least two shots at each of the men.

Sitting in an oversized chair, his feet dangling above the floor, the boy told law enforcement officials in an hour-long police video, released on Tuesday, that he found the bodies of his father, Vincent Romero, 29, and Timothy Romans, 39, when he returned home from school in St Johns, Arizona.

"I was thinking, 'What the heck is going on?'" the boy said in the video. "'Who did this? Why would anyone do this?'"

The boy eventually admits to having pulled the trigger on November 5. As the video wraps up, he buries his head in his jacket. "I'm going to go to juvie," the boy says after an officer asks what he's thinking.

At one point, the boy told authorities he had been mad at his father. He said he was supposed to bring home some papers from school earlier in the week and got spanked by his stepmother at his father's request because he didn't. The boy has been charged in juvenile court with two counts of murder. Police say he used a .22-caliber rifle to kill the men, as his father and his co-worker, Romans, came home from work. The boy's stepmother wasn't home.

A defense attorney has said police overreached in their questioning of the boy, who was not represented by a family member or lawyer during the interview with Apache County sheriff and a police detective.

"I think they're going to have a problem getting that statement into court," defense attorney Benjamin Brewer said earlier this month before a judge issued a gag order in the case. "I believe there were many violations in regards to how it was obtained."

Police Chief Roy Melnick has said the boy planned and methodically carried out the shootings, but the boy gave no indication in the interview that he had been thinking about shooting his father.