Prosecutors entered a plea deal in the case last week, but the details aren't clear. Prosecutors had sought to drop one of two first-degree murder charges against the boy.
Police records show family members, including the boy's grandparents, said Romano and his wife were too hard on the boy and they weren't surprised to hear he was a suspect in the shooting.
Police Chief Roy Melnick wrote in his report: "I comforted them as best we could. After several minutes, [the boy's grandmother] shouted out in an angry and loud tone, 'I knew this would happen. They were too hard on [the boy]. I knew he did it, He spent the night in my bed cuddling up to me. I had a feeling he did it. If an eight year old boy is capable of doing this, it's [him]."
Sad for the life that is ruined for this boy, but wonder the future damage the world has been saved.
I wonder if they will keep in a facility. I doubt it.
Let’s say he’s been keeping a tab since he was four, and that’s early to start keeping up with that stuff, that’s nearly a spanking a day.
No child that I have ever met does so much bad that they deserve that. And I’ve met some doozies.
Geez...what do you say to that....
Grandparents always say that the kids are diceplined to much.
He was abused. They were cruel
My grandson is 8 and is as innocent as the day is long......he has good parents. I can't imagine what went on in this house to make a "baby" kill his father.
So why did he kill the guy renting?
Hospital records?
Something doesn’t come together on this as yet!
Well, we’ll never know for sure, without having met the people in question (too late now). But is this kid telling the truth, and can he count that accurately?
Spare the rod, don’t get shot dead by the child.
If this kid is a psychopath, I think they need to test his 1,000 volt limit.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27600105/
Police said Romero’s son planned and methodically carried out the killings, and confessed.
Prosecutors said that there was no record of any complaints filed about the boy with Arizona Child Protective Services and that the youngster had no disciplinary record at school.
...while friends and neighbors disputed any suggestion the boy had been abused by his father.
They painted a picture of Vincent Romero as a caring father who seemed to be doing all he could to raise a polite and respectful boy.
“They were always together doing things as a family, fishing, hunting,” Carlos Diaz, a cousin of Romero’s current wife, said after the funeral Mass at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church.
Well, children do have to set limits for their parents. Wait, how does that go again?
It is likely that tens of thousands of children are abused as this boy purportedly has been. If what the boy says is true, than one has to admire him for not letting his parents break his spirit as many other children are maimed for life because their parents are not parent material.
Just imagine, an adult beating up a little boy or girl; too sad to think about. Adults who harm children are in the same league as terrorists, IMO.
The audio I heard of part of the police interview with this boy was downright chilling. There was no emotion whatsoever in his voice at any point. He sounded like a robot. He didn’t even sound like a child telling a story about anything- much less murder.
I have no idea if the boy was born with emotional/psychiatric problems and the parents did not get help for him, or if he was abused to the point he became mentally shut down or psychopathic or had other trauma in his life but he sure sounded like he has serious issues.
The only time I have seen a child like him was when I once took care of a boy that had idiots for parents- his mom ran off with his uncle and his entire extended family was so caught up in the drama of one siblings wife taking off with another sibling’s hubby that the children of both were neglected. Noone in that family had even bothered to think how a train wreck like that had effected the kids involved. I told the grandma he needed counseling and to this day I expect him to have major issues at some point and he is grown now. No feelings, no emotion, just vacant.
There is a story about this boy in AZ that is yet to come out I think. When I first heard it I thought perhaps the men were sexually abusing him- still a thought in my mind. But it could be his parent’s divorce was a major trauma or he was severely abused in some way.
An 8 year old who can formulate a plan like this, and keep records of specific instances, and take action when the proper time comes, must be some sort of genius. Assuming the records were anywhere near accurate, and not just flights of fancy or the product of bad math (1,000 spankings sounds like a lot) then this is a pretty interesting story. Why are they saying he shot the roommate? That’s the element that could potentially dispel this as a “child abuse issue” and flag it as a premeditated, cold-blooded murder.
Gives a whole new meaning to “this is going to hurt me more than you.”
I’d have to go with some kind of sexual abuse here... the tip-off is that the boy was reportedly being spanked and treated ‘too harshly’ by both his father and the father’s wife (who’s strangely absent from the story, it doesn’t even mention if she’s his mother), but the people he killed were the father and the renter. I could see how he’d kill the renter if he was going after the father and the wife and didn’t want to leave witnesses or thought the guy would get in the way, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. Plus, despite the allegations of physical abuse, it was only the female in the household that he didn’t kill.
I dunno. He’s 8. If he’s been keeping a log for three years, that means he started at age 5. How many people start keeping logs at that age?
Somehow the story just sounds a little too far-fetched to me. I think this kid is good at embellishing.
His father could have overdone it nonetheless.
If I ever have the misfortune to meet this kid, I’m going to smile and say “How do you do?”
If he tells me to buy him an ice cream cone, I’ll ask, “What flavor and how many scoops?”