Jon Johnson File Photo/Gila Herald: A 9-year-old boy has been charged with attempted murder in the second degree.
Court currently checking to see if the defendant is competent to stand trial
By Jon Johnson
GRAHAM COUNTY – It is a case of simply copying something a child saw on TV or is it something more sinister?
That is what the juvenile court system is currently attempting to find out after a 9-year-old boy was charged with attempted murder in the second degree, aggravated assault, and adding poison to another product.
The charges were levied after the boy allegedly admitted to mixing several chemicals from house cleaning products into personal hygiene products in an effort to kill his father’s fiancé and injure her two daughters.
A Graham County Sheriff’s deputy was initially dispatched to the Mt. Graham Regional Medical Center at about 3:39 p.m. on Oct. 2 regarding the issue. Upon arrival, the deputy learned of various health issues the victims have been experiencing over the past few months and that they were believed to be caused by the defendant’s actions. In addition to mixing dangerous chemicals into personal products, such as the liquid in a contact lens case, shampoo and body wash bottles, and toothpaste, the defendant allegedly admitted to urinating into the victim’s contact case and using a victim’s toothbrush on dog feces. The hospital advised it was attempting to get the boy into a psychiatric facility.
The victims showed the deputy rashes on their skin and advised they also had bouts with nausea, hair loss, itching, burning, and eye soreness/blindness.
The 9-year-old boy said he did what he did to get rid of his father’s fiancé and her two daughters so that his mother and sister could move back in together with them instead. He said he learned how to do what he did by watching the cartoon show Rick and Morty while staying with his mother out of state. The show is rated TV14-DLSV. That means some material in the show would be found by many parents to be unsuitable for children under the age of 14, generally by the use of suggestive dialogue, coarse language, intense sexual situations, and intense violence.
The victims advised they didn’t want to take any chances of being injured further, so they disposed of all the cleaning products and personal products that could have been tampered with. The deputy then later was guided to a dumpster, where he retrieved five large trash bags full of cleaning and hygiene products. The deputy also collected more products as evidence from a kitchen trash can at the victims’ residence and a bedroom.
After the defendant’s initial interview, he was referred to Juvenile Probation, which then transported him to the Pinal County Juvenile Detention Facility.
The juvenile is still being examined to see if he should indeed stand against the charges he has been accused of.
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