The boy, dressed up for court with his unruly blond hair slicked down, whispered with his lawyer but showed no reaction when a judge decreed that he be confined to a juvenile lockdown facility for murdering his neo-Nazi father when he was 10.
He is 13 now, but the case is still a source of anguish for those involved.
“It’s hard not to get attached to him,” said Deputy District Attorney Michael Soccio, the veteran prosecutor who argued that a secure facility was preferable to a residential treatment center. “He’s so peculiar and yet charming and a lost soul.”
Following Thursday’s decision, Soccio said he plans to visit the boy and try to help him to be “as undamaged as possible” when he gets out and faces life as an adult.
The teen, neatly dressed in a vest and white shirt, peered at the judge’s seven-page written ruling through thick eye glasses but his lawyer said he did not really comprehend it.
“He’s going to get a significant amount of therapy. I hope he will face up to what he did and come out as undamaged as possible,” prosecutor Soccio said outside court.
He said the boy had anger issues well before his father become involved in white supremacist causes. At age 5 he stabbed a teacher with a pencil during his first day in kindergarten. He also tried to strangle a teacher with a phone cord.
“He was born with a very troubled spirit, a lot of anger,” said Soccio. “He was unable to control his anger from the time he was tiny.”
The judge who found him guilty of second-degree murder in January said she thought long and hard about the appropriate placement for him , AP informs.
