Texas boy charged for setting special needs child on fire

[Calista241]

Source: NY Daily News

A child in Texas allegedly set a 10-year-old special needs boy on fire in a field, leaving him in a coma and covered in severe burns, authorities and relatives said.

The young victim, Kayden Culp, has been on life support at a San Antonio hospital since Sunday. He is being treated for burns on more than 20% of his body.

His mother told the San-Antonio Express-News that Culp, who has speech and hearing problems, thought he was friends with the alleged aggressor — even though that boy picked on him.

“My son is a special guy,” Tristyn Hatchett, 29, said.

“He considered these guys his friends, but they would make fun of him and pick on him and tease him. He was usually the brunt of that kind of joke, but he kept playing with them.”

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/texas-boy-charged-setting-special-child-fire-article-1.2819856

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WTF is wrong with people.

[apcalc]

1. Question- do you think the petpetrator can

Be rehabilitated? Is this kind of like the young who abuse helpless animals?

I believe there are some serious mental problems with the perpetrator, and this is a possible sign of future abhorrent and aberrant behavior.

[Calista241]

3. The article doesn't say specifically, but i'm assuming the perpetrator of the arson

is in the 9-12 year old range, and no, I do not think they should be tried as an adult.

Ideally, someone with this type of incident will receive adequate legal punishment in a juvenile facility, and then be mandated psychiatric counseling for an extended period of time. This type of incident does attract comparisons to the actions of serial killers and torturers.

[Helen Borg]

5. Trying a minor as an adult...

Makes no sense at all! In general.

[marble falls]

7. I totally agree. He is in no way an adult.

[egeorgequi]

14. But yet so many adults behave in exactly the same way n/t

[juxtaposed]

31. what ever happened to charging the parents. The child learned this behavior at home.

different story from the local news?



http://www.ksat.com/news/juvenile-charged-with-first-degree-arson-in-burning-10-year-old-boy

[Calista241]

33. i seriously doubt the kid learned how to burn someone nearly to death at home.

you can accuse the parents of being bad parents, but you'd have to prove that they taught him the exact elements of the crime, and pretty much have it on tape of them saying "first, you douse your victim with gasoline, and then you strike a match."

[juxtaposed]

34. I recanted the parents b/c of the full story of what really happened but, yes

one could charge the parents and no they do not have to explain how to set a person on fire, they just have to exhibit a distain for a person or ppl. and wish them dead! Leave it up for the kids to create a novel way to do that..

[shenmue]

15. Good question

[geek tragedy]

17. no, the kind of person who does this is broken, permanently. nt

[Yo_Mama]

24. Maybe not, but at this age you have to try.

If the person who did this were 16-18, sadly I would say try as an adult.

This is not a good sign for the child who did it. Who gets their jollies from seeing another person burn alive?

It also depends on mental functioning of the child perpetrator - if the IQ relatively low, perhaps the child has delayed mental functioning. Or if the child has been the victim of abuse or neglect, therapy and treatment might be sufficient.

The very young UK atrocity-murderers of the two-year old James Bulger are a mixed result. One was released in 2001 and supposedly has stayed out of trouble.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger

The second was returned for prison on child pornography charges:
https://www.bizarrepedia.com/venables-and-thompson/

He is supposed to be out again.

So did rehab work for one and not the other?

[Codeine]

29. No. This child is beyond repair.

I have very little to absolutely no belief in the idea of rehabilitation of almost anyone, and none for a person this twisted, regardless of age. I regard it as a virtual certainty that he will eventually harm someone else.

[YOHABLO]

2. If you are not depressed and angry then there is something wrong with

YOU!

[bettyellen]

13. This is in defense of the kid who set this child on fire? WTF?

[turbinetree]

4. When someone decides to to do a deliberate "ACT" of design to hurt someone else

then there should be no age requirement.

He knew the difference between right and wrong and he made a conscience decision to HURT someone



To the young man in the hospital and his family

[Yo_Mama]

25. Young children don't have the minds of an adult and cannot be

legally held responsible. What are you going to do with an 8 year-old murderer?

As they get older I agree that rehab possibilities are diminished, but it is very hard to say a 12 year-old should be written off, or given the same penalty as an adult.

[turbinetree]

36. The question is, Was this an "ACT or a "DESIGN"

My first impression of it was a "DESIGN", which in my opinion makes it more heinous.

Empathy is the question, does this young man have those qualities, time will tell

[AllyCat]

6. What in the entire hell??

[shenmue]

18. So awful

[aeroman]

8. Spawn of a Deplorable

I will refrain from calling a 9-12 year old kid Deplorable, but I will say that acorns do not fall too far from their tree.

[rivegauche]

10. True, and you're probably right

But I think that a kid like the attacker is probably a psychopath, and there is no cure for that. I would bet that there was one kid who was the ringleader in the abuse, and the others were his minions. The minions were just as guilty, but perhaps the final attack with the fire wouldn't have happened without the psychopath in charge. That kid needs to be locked up in a secure mental ward indefinitely. Psychopaths don't recover, they're damaged beasts and need to be quarantined.

[lark]

9. Lock him up for life, no hope of parole ever.

He is irredeemable and needs to be kept away from everyone who's not a stone cold murderer. I don't care that he's only 10, this is beyond heinous.

[womanofthehills]

20. Main problem is he is probably a psychopath

and will always be a psychopath. It's a hard problem because you cannot teach empathy.

Years ago, I when worked in a children's rehab hospital, a small boy came in who was living on the streets with his mother - the tip of his finger had been cut off for a month and this was the first time he was being seen so he was admitted. He was about 5 yrs old, blond, blue eyes and charming. He almost killed the little girl in the hospital room next to his - beat her to a pulp. Hard for me to think this little guy went on to be a standup person.

[Old Vet]

11. During that period of my life( age 9-12) for some reason I was also bullied.....

I remember wishing bad things on the punk bastards who would use me as entertainment, I was small, skinny, had blazing red hair, and poor. I wouldn't wish a childhood of being bullied on anyone, It was terrible. But I never had a serious thought of harming any of the bullies. To come up with a plan to splash gas on another person(not to mention disabled) and light it up is beyond the pale. I would bet there's some serious animal abuse somewhere in these kids past. These so-called friends who did this crime need to be locked up and treated professionally for some time. BTW I went from 5'1 weighing 140 in 10th grade to 6'2 weighing in at 205 at 17 the day I graduated jungle training in the military. I wasn't bullied anymore since

[MFM008]

12. My son was a big kid

Tall. Overweight. Kids bullied him.
One day he got tired of it and punched the worst offender in the nose.
Kid ran home crying with a bloody nose.
He was never bullied again in school.
He and the kid became friends.
I don't advocate violence but he did what I didn't do. Fought back.
Believe it or not..I was bullied for having to wear glasses.

[geek tragedy]

16. anyone who could do that--I don't care about age--is fundamentally broken inside their head

in a way that can never heal or be fixed.

The perp should never, ever, ever be allowed to set foot outside a psychiatric detention facility.

[Old Vet]

19. Cant agree more geek tragedy............

Thinking what these kids were doing while this child screamed in pain breaks my heart, Even if this poor child KINDA physically heals, The nightmares will stay forever.

[romanic]

21. Poor kid. :(

The perp sounds like a budding psychopath. I wouldn't put my money on him learning from this, he needs to be tried as an adult for attempted murder.

[justiceischeap]

22. I don't understand why he's being charged with 1st degree arson instead of

attempted murder. It makes no sense to me that this would be an arson charge.

[Calista241]

23. They're probably just holding him on a 1st degree arson charge

and plan on adding charges as they develop or get results back from evidence tested.

And if the kid dies, they'll change the charges also.

[Yo_Mama]

27. Attempted murder involves intent and is harder to justify in a

child this age, unless one can get the child to say that he/she intended to kill.

Charges, even holding charges, should be closely fitted to probable cause evidence. The younger the perpetrator, the more chance that the consequence of the act was not foreseen.

[Yo_Mama]

28. According to sheriff, they were burning a shed not trying to burn the boy

http://www.ksat.com/news/juvenile-charged-with-first-degree-arson-in-burning-10-year-old-boy

At a news conference, officials said the shed was already on fire when a juvenile male poured gasoline onto the fire, causing a flash fire that burned Kayden.

"Which in turn resulted in a backflash to ignite the container and the contents of that accelerant, which were then discarded by that individual, which inadvertently, according to everything that we've developed, struck this child," Police Chief David Knight said.

You have to have probable cause to charge.

[juxtaposed]

32. If this is true than all the hang the kid, throw away the key stuff above is moot.

"We know that these kids, like I said before, are all friends," she said. "He didn't deliberately do this and go over there and throw this gasoline on top of him. You guys heard what they said in there (news conference). They were messing with it (gasoline), so somebody went this way, and it splashed everywhere."

http://www.ksat.com/news/juvenile-charged-with-first-degree-arson-in-burning-10-year-old-boy

[Judi Lynn]

30. I'd support bringing some charge against the person who opted to go with the "arson" charge!

I always believed "arson" is used in charges involving property.

[GOLGO 13]

26. He is a monster & unfit to walk among normal humans.

It's a miracle that the poor boy survived. He will never have a normal life again. That walking evil will kill eventually.

[Greywing]

35. I actually read the story linked to the local news (rather than nydaily news)

I'd encourage other people to do the same. The boy did not deliberately light the victim on fire ... read the story. It's just a friggin tragedy and I hope Culp recovers.