Another day, another tragedy in Gunmerica. According to the Sheriff’s Department in Jefferson County, Tennessee, authorities have charged an 11-year-old boy in the shotgun shooting death of an 8-year-old neighbor. According to reports and witness accounts the girl was shot because the boy was angry that she wouldn’t let him see her puppy. So, he left her, where she had been playing in her yard around 7:30 PM Sunday evening. He went home and got his father’s shotgun, and shot the girl, McKayla Dyer, in revenge. The chest wound resulted in her death.
According to the girl’s mother, the boy had bullied her daughter relentlessly ever since they became neighbors in the White Pine mobile home park. McKayla’s mother, Latashy Dyer, said of the clearly ongoing and escalating situation:
He was making fun of her, calling her names — just being mean to her. I had to go the principal about him, and he quit for a while, and then all of a sudden yesterday he shot her.
She was a precious little girl, she was a mommy’s girl — no matter how bad of a mood you were in, she could always make you smile.
Another neighbor who witnessed the situation, Chasity Arwood, said:
Wanting to see a puppy, the little girl laughed and told him no, and that was it. Guns should be under lock and key if you have a child, nowhere in arms reach of a child.
Ms. Arwood is absolutely right. This is a murder on the part of the 11-year-old boy, but it is also a case of gross parental negligence. The parents definitely need to pay dearly for this one, with monetary compensation, criminal charges, or both. Then again, their kid was an obvious bully with serious anger problems. He learned that somewhere, likely in the home. Well, they are getting their comeuppance now. The boy is currently in juvenile court, but it is possible he will be charged with first-degree murder as an adult. Something tells me that’s exactly how this should end, but the parents should be penalized as well.
These “responsible” gun owners are now responsible for the death of a little girl, and for the fact that their murdering bully of a son will rot in prison, starting at the ripe old age of eleven.
Watch a news report on this tragedy below, courtesy of local station WKRN-TV:
Featured image via video screen capture from Raw Story
This is one of the only nations in the world where children under the age of 18 are charged and when convicted imprisoned as adults, for the whole of their lives. That is cruel and unusual punishment and clearly it is based on revenge and retribution.
What we need is to join the 21st Century. We have seriously fallen behind the rest of the world in valuing human lives. Humanity has left the devaluing philosophy of fundamentalism and especially the Big 3 religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Though all loudly proclaim their love of peace, the fundamentalists of each religion are stridently anti-person and above all they devalue human life.
Kids these days.
if we banned guns, this would of never happend eh.. :O
Funny how you pole vault right over regulating and proceed directly to banning.
The negligent parent should spend life in prison. The 11-year-old should be tossed into the juvenile system for as long as they can keep him there.
And… time to force people to have insurance on guns. That way the true lunatics will be uninsurable and be unable to own guns.
Put the parents in jail over this please.
This kid should never had access to a gun. If people have children in the home it ought to be mandatory that they have a gun safe and all firearms be locked up. Furthermore, the kids should never have the combo or keys to the gun safe. Too many kids are harmed of killed by access to guns. Gun owners and or parents should be held liable for the child’s actions with unsecured guns and be charged as accessories to murder.
The 11 yr. old very likely knows how to use a gun safely. He must have been taught how a gun operates and what it can do. Responsible parents teach gun safety. The problem is that this 11 y.o. was also introduced to a new method of “equalizing” a situation-not by parents, but by his own rationale. Like many in the news, he used a gun to solve a problem. He wasn’t taught that way, but he knew using a gun was part of a list of responses to what he saw as a problem. How do we regulate that? Guns are part of the American way of solving problems.
You sure do make a lot of assumptions.
If you say so.
These parents need to be arrested.
One thing, these were in no way “RESPONSIBLE” gun owners.
As a TRULY responsible gun owner, if the firearm is NOT in your possession, it needs to be under lock and key, accessible only by RESPONSIBLE adults (I say that as the brother to a mentally challenged adult who should NEVER have a gun, under any circumstances).
These parents should be charged with - in Texas it would be called Felony Homicide - that is, when a person commits a felony OTHER THAN MURDER, and someone dies, they can be charged with Felony Homicide. UNFORTUNATELY, there are only 12 states with Child access prevention laws, and Tennesse is not one of them (there are no federal CAP laws). Even more unfortunate is that in the 12 states that have them, it is only a misdemeanor - treated like a traffic ticket. In Texas at least, if the child discharges the weapon, it becomes a Class A Misdemeanor… SMH. That is wrong. Leaving a firearm unsecured where a child can get to it should at least be a minimum level felony.
Don’t think you know what “responsible” means. Because these were clearly NOT responsible gun owners. But keep pushing that anti gun agenda. You can complain about how all the criminals still have guns when the new Reich begins here.
Though this story is extremely sad, I’m disheartened to see this writer bale the parents for the child’s behavior, as if the child “learned” impulsive psychotic actions from his parents. Are there mistakes the patents made, very likely, but that doesn’t mean these parents taught or condoned his current or previous behavior. I have a son that could easily be this child. He too is 11. We’ve done everything we can to help or son, and he hasn’t “learned” to threaten to murder people or physically harm people from us, but it won’t stop people or there for judging us as crappy patents. Ever since my boy was young, I’ve dealt with the stares from people as I had to carry my son out of a store while he beat me, while calmly asking bystanders to help push my toddler and infant out of the store with me. Rarely did people help, they just glared and judged. Society fails itself.