.
“They have not called me,” Sousa said. “Last time I talked to them is when they told me my son wasn’t with them, and the next day I found out my son was dead, and that makes me a little angry but there’s nothing I can do.”
The boys didn’t tell the father that the son was with them or that they were all going to the zoo. Perhaps to cover up a planned crime?
Or perhaps a crime they had gotten away with before?
Let's see. It's late on Christmas Day. The zoo is many miles away. These men (they're not boys!) first lie to the father about his son's whereabouts. Next thing we know they're at the zoo at closing time (after dark?) and they just happen to have SLINGSHOTS with them. They probably were drinking.
Up til now, I had thought they simply got rowdy while visiting the zoo. But, with the revelation of the slingshots, I now think they'd probably done this before. Though we'll never know, I'd bet the older brothers were showing off for the younger boy.
Justice in this case would be to find BOTH the zoo and the boys equally negligent. Pay their medical bills, give $1,000,000 to the dead boy's father. Make the zoo donate $5 million to a tiger preservation charity.