An 11-year-old Pennsylvania boy allegedly shot his father to death after previously having his Nintendo Switch handheld gaming system taken away.
The boy is facing criminal homicide charges after a 13 January shooting at his family’s home in Duncannon Borough.
As put in court documents obtained and reported by WGAL News 8, the case illustrates how easily children can access guns in the US, where firearms are ubiquitous.
The victim was reportedly discovered in the bedroom he shared with his wife, which court documents say is connected to their son’s bedroom by a closet.
Police reported it was the child’s birthday, and he had entered the bedroom shouting: “Daddy’s dead.” Troopers at the scene also reportedly said that they heard the son tell his mother: “I killed Daddy.”
Police said the shooting occurred after the couple had gone to bed shortly past midnight. The child reportedly told authorities that he had had a good day with his parents, but the documents reportedly state that he became “mad” when his father told him it was time to go to bed.
According to the news outlet, the court document says that the boy told police he found a key to the gun safe in his father’s drawer in his parent’s bedroom. He reportedly unlocked it while attempting to locate his Nintendo Switch – which had previously been taken away from him – and found a gun.
Talent like that can’t go to waste. He’ll be put in ICE’s young achievers club where youth will be free to learn and grow at an advanced rate free from normal societies mores. He will practice high-performance psychopathy, bleeding edge unwarranted agression and advanced immunity from prosecution.
This boy has a bright future, as does America.
The son then allegedly admitted to “removing the gun from the safe, loading bullets into it and walking over to his father’s side of the bed”, according to the affidavit. “He pulled back the hammer and fired the gun at his father,” the affidavit adds.
When asked what he believed would happen when he fired the gun, the boy responded that he was “mad” and that he had “not thought about that”, according to investigators.
Jesus man. This is a horrific situation. That poor woman lost her husband and, effectively, her son in one night.
The fact that the kid could easily get into the safe makes it no such thing.
That makes it… not a horrific situation? What?
Makes the safe, not a safe.
Well, that makes much more sense.
Lol I was also confused, we can be dumb in solidarity today.
🤜🤛
Maybe something good can come out of it. The kid has serious issues which hopefully he gets intense therapy for, rather than not killing his dad and growing up being some psycho killer that terrorizes the general public.
The kid killed one of the only people that might have provided that care, and probably left the other in poverty.
The odds ain’t good.
He’s likely going to have mental health issues now, as a result of the shooting.
As for pre-existing mental health issues; to me the most likely condition seems to be “was 11”, which most people grow out of. As a thought experiment, how many 11 year olds are there that you would be comfortable having a gun unsupervised.
The number of people in this comments who think that looking for the key to a gun safe, getting a gun out of it, loading it, and using it to murder someone is normal 11 year old behavior is insane. Kid has some serious issues to be capable of something like this
At 11 my dad had guns in the house, but not in a million years would my anger have made me think yo load his gun shoot him. (Plus ammo was hidden and locks separate from his guns)
That kid has serious unchecked emotional dysregulation in my opinion.
I think in rural Canada you can handle guns at 12 legally.
He is autistic. It’s in the article.
And?
hopefully he gets intense therapy for
Oh he’s going to be in the US prison system now. He will get next to zero mental health care provided.
At his age, that is not necessarily the case.
Yep, 10 years old is the age in PA where a child can be charged with a crime. Placing him in the juvenile court/prison system. Under 10 and courts could only send him to a psychiatric facility.
He is still under the cutoff for where they could charge him as an adult (14).
11 year old boy who barely understands the consequences of his actions obviously has access to weapons and then shoots his dad…
This is extremely tragic but this obviously being the US, you can bet your ass that this little boy’s life hasn’t been ruined enough.
The government will jump on this, jail his ass as an adult because I don’t know why they have laws for kids of they try all kids like adults anyways, and they’ll make sure he’ll be fucked for life.
The US is a shit hole third world banana republic
Yeah, my kid is way too unpredictable, there’s is absolutely no way that I could ever have a firearm in my home or else this will be me or my wife, 100% certainty. We regularly get punched, kicked, bitten, etc almost daily. When he’s angry (which is often) he just can’t think, and then he regrets his actions later, but he does some dumb shit when he’s angry…
Bro. You can’t just accept this. Get the kid in therapy before he becomes a horrible adult.
Harsh? Come on, man. Help the kid!
We have more professionals involved than you’d believe. Trust me, we’re working on it, but change is a slow road. You may have heard for instance that therapy only works if you want to change, well if a nine year old isn’t mature enough to want to change or be willing to participate in the process, well that also slows things down.
At the risk of being blunt here, I’m not really looking for parenting advice, I’m actually pretty sure we’re doing a decent job despite a particularly hard kid with some very real challenges.
But I do sincerely see that you mean well, and want to help, so thank you.
Hey man, thanks for responding. I apologize for the unwanted judgment and I wish you and your kid the best.
Cheers.
How old are they?
9 now. As he gets older the situation is getting better. But then again, he punches harder too.
Have you considered having him visit a therapist?
He may have unresolved emotions that would benefit him (and people around him) to come out.
Child therapists pretty much “play” with them so it’s something kids don’t get annoyed/bored (or even give them a lot of thoughts)
We have a whole lot of professionals involved. He certainly has unresolved emotions, as well as emotional delay and two other diagnoses. Don’t worry, we’re on it, there’s just a lot of work to do.
My daughter has “reactive attachment disorder” and she can behave like this. She is adopted from a rough first few years of life and being in the foster system for a while before we took her and her older brother in.
Like you said below, as she gets older she is getting better at controlling impulses, but not 100% and so when she does get upset she is stronger and more dangerous. 2024-2025 school year was super rough for us. She went to the ER many times, as it was the only support we could utilize for the kind of violence she was exhibiting, and eventually we were able to get her into a child psych unit for a few weeks and then into residential treatment. It was tough; we had to push back on very judgemental hospital staff, drive am hour one-way for weeks to visit her in residential, call the governor’s ombudsmen, and just generally do a ton of work to get her the help she needed.
At one point, the psych unit’s family coordinator, who’s job was basically to convince us to bring her back home after a week of them basically only sedating her asked if we were ready to bring her back home. And when we told her that we weren’t because we expected her to rapidly move back to violent behaviors, she insisted we were going to have to, so I asked “and what if we don’t?” She threatened to call DHS. So I leaned into the camera and said “great, let’s do that then”. I believe this to be the only reason we got a successful referral to residential treatment.
All of this was necessary treatment for my daughter. She is doing much better now. She has an IEP, which has placed her in an “emotional support classroom” and is on some good meds that are definitely helping. That said, she is still exhibiting violent behaviors from time to time. The trend is moving in the right direction, but she still has rough days.
So anyway, I encourage you to seek help with this. It can be VERY HARD. You may be forced to make tough decisions and push back against people who are very judgemental and even making scary threats about you being an abusive or neglectful parent. They do not know your child. They do not know you. They do not know your home life. You must do what is right to being peace and safety to your home, even with these challenges. Good luck. Please feel free to reach out with questions or a non-judgemental ear to bounce off of.
White 40something American with a goatee and a shaved head who keeps a gun next to his bed and is raising a violent kid?
Will withhold judgment on whether this is any big loss.
i don’t think you need to be a violent kid to accidentally shoot someone to death; that’s why guns are so insidious. it only takes a couple of simple actions at most to kill someone. it’s simple enough where people might not think about the consequences before killing somebody. it makes death easily accessible and not a very physical or straining task.
i also would generally refrain from calling an unknown kid who you just don’t know violent, or passing judgement on the father for looking a certain way. stereotypes might turn out true, but they also might not.
Would be more than happy to be wrong but it this guy wasn’t MAGA I’ll eat my hat
But don’t worry bro all this tragedies are worth it because all the guns will protect America for tyranny… Wait, hold up…
If just the father had his own gun to him, he could have had defended himself.
Daddy had it coming. Don’t touch that boys switch.
