OK. That was thuggish, but that headline is agitprop.
That was firmly an assault, and they weren’t in each others faces, but it wasn’t any sort of intentional murder.
The video shows he was punched once, walked back, then fell over into a pillar.
Not remotely OK, but not murder, and not really even a beating (that entails repeated hits). I think there’s room for discretion on this one - though simple probation seems light.
The whole video was not shown. Two were charged in the assault. Only one was shown in the video. What else happened we are not privy to. How many times was he hit? Only fact is that the innocent kid is dead.
The article says that the two older boys continued to hit the victim after he had fallen.
So, yeah, probably not intentional murder, but reckless or negligent homicide.
Further video shows the perpetrator running over to the victim — who has now fallen and hit his head — and then punching him again while he’s down on the ground. So clearly more than one unlucky punch. It also looks like the attacker was black, which I don’t recall reading in the article.
Murder is the unlawful taking of a human life.
Type of planning, or not, forethought and such determine the level of a murder.