Will a Child Be Charged in the Fires?

Source: Time

By MICHAEL LINDENBERGER

The 10-year-old boy who accidentally started one of the worst California wildfires last month could face stern consequences, should prosecutors decide to bring charges. Though too young to be charged as an adult, the boy could still face millions of dollars in fines, removal from his home and possible detention as a ward of the state. For now the boy's fate - and that of his parents, who would be partially liable for any restitution payments he would have to pay - rests with Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley. His office told TIME he has not yet decided how to proceed. "The matter is under review," spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons told TIME on Monday. "No decision has been made."

To bring those charges, all Cooley must decide is whether the boy knew right from wrong - an easy standard to meet, other prosecutors in the state say. "That is a lot easier to establish than you would think," said Cyndi Jo Means, a deputy district attorney in nearby San Diego County who leads that county's juvenile division arson team. "Think of your own children, even very small children; most of the time they know when they did something wrong."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20071107/us_time/willachildbechargedinthefires

That would inhuman and very cruel and destroy that family. It's not like the child set it on purpose. It was an accident.

You don't know if the child set it on purpose. You weren't there. Wait--Were you?

And maybe the kid didn't mean to destroy the homes and lives and property of so many people--he was playing with matches. His intentions were to set SOMETHING on fire.

That kid or his parents are likely going to be sued anyway. One way or another he and is parents are going to pay.

Commu6

WTF How do YOU know he intended to set anything on fire? WTF were you there? WTF Didn't think so.

Stay away from children.

How's that grab you chuckles?

Living where he did, did his parents ever tell him about the terrible risk of a wildfire there? What was he really doing? Kids always have a reason for what they are doing. (Playing camping, playing a pioneer, just found matches for the first time....) Or has he been warned? If he's lived in that area for his 10 years, he's seen & heard about how awful the fires are. I honestly don't think it's age as much as it is the individual boy.

but there still seem to be a lot of car accidents.

The last part of the brain that develops is the part that says "Whoa - that would be a really stupid thing to do." and that isn't finished developing until you're pushing 25 (the car insurance companies must have always known that as that's when rates drop). This kid is 10 years old - a long way from being able to understand all the dire consequences an action may have.

and most of us dabbled with fire in our youths, albeit to not such disastrous ends.

Who are we to invoke tragedy and cast judgment on a 10 year old who was simply doing what a lot of us did, only he did it under unmerciful prevailing winds? Maybe only those in the path of the fire.

If prosecuted, this will mess up this kid and his family for life.

I'm so sick of our utterly draconian Department of alleged Justice under the oxymoronic flag of compassionate conservatism, when compassion is simply an attribute to which frugality could never apply, rendering these insensitive judgments.

The kid was guilty of being. . .well. . .a kid.

Few responsible parents feel as though they have to watch their 10 year olds 24/7.

When they are really little, it's a whole 'nother matter.

A fire gets out of control in the blink of an eye.

I've written a lengthy fire parable about this all too human phenomenon. PM me if you want to read it.

toodles

with fire. My great-grandfather caught old man Pesek's cornfield on fire because 'he was trying to get rid of the weeds in the ditch.' People are careless with fire, underestimate how quick it can get out of control.

Carelessness is not an accident though. There still needs to be some kind of penalty, but I'll be damned if I know what it would or should be.

usually cause a wildfire. It usually lights a cigarette or candle. Was he lighting leaves or brush or the house? That would be different.

I was using a chemistry set with a bunsen burner by that age , and many kids camp or use gas stoves, so they know what they are doing with fire. Prosecutors should be able to find out if it was an innocuous use that got out of control or was arson.

Probably, yeah.

And whether or not this kid set the fire deliberately, I don't think anyone would argue that a 10-year-old would have a sufficient understanding of combustion and spread to think that he was likely to set the entire southwestern part of the state ablaze. The scope of the damage and destruction is mind-boggling enough to me, and I'm pushing 50. It's way outside the understanding of a 10-year-old.

I hope the saner heads in the LA County DA's office prevail, and this kid gets some help rather than having to shoulder the entire responsibility for the insanity of California's overbuilding in a desert and decades of mismanagement of the ecosystem.

because their identity cannot be revealed, so therefore case is solved. The public is satisfied and the real perpetrators go free. Hard to believe. Suspicious official skulduggery.

It takes a lot of fuel and a little spark to start a big fire. So who's at fault. They guy who made the spark or the guy who made the fuel. Since we can't blame god, then we have to blame some kid. BTW, the boy's name was leaked recently, Bovine O'Leary.

a match, even one used to start a small campfire, would not be enough alone to cause the fires in California.

it took years of carelessness by developers, buyers and politicians to create that "natural disaster".

in the end, it was going to spark, whether by a kid playing with matches or by a bolt of lightning.

but hey, it's a hell of a lot more satisfying to take a child from his family than it is to kick yourself for foolishly building a mcmansion in a suburban development nestled smack dab in a firezone.

it's like... a child is playing on the banks of a dam people have noticed for years is crumbling. the kid knocks a part of it off, ultimately letting the dam break, and all those people who have built in the floodplain and ignored the maintenance necessary suddenly call for the kid's blood.

wtf.

The childs name is Bovine? Bovine means cow.

Lots of people suffered as the result of that fire. Odds are, a lot of them want revenge against that kid and/or his family...because it's too much to accept that some things, even some disastrous things, can be accidents. If you come to accept that your entire life can be wiped out by an "act of God," that's hard enough to accept, but, if you expand that to accept the same thing can happen as the result of an accidental action by another human being, with that person not deserving any blame, the world seems a terribly dangerous, insecure place. The only way to regain security, in one's mind, is to decide that there is no such thing as an innocent yet destructive "accident" by another human being, and that any human-caused disaster must have someone held responsible and punished and/or forced to make restitution in order to bring stability back to the universe. So it wouldn't surprise me that many people who have lost their homes would demand "justice" against whoever caused the fire, whether it be a 10-year-old boy or his parents. To let them off scot-free would simply be acknowledging that the world we live in is a chaotic, insecure place, and lots of people are unwilling to do so, for their own mental stability.

we really aren't far removed from that.

:sarcasm:

I feel really bad for the kid and his parents, I hope they are not separated, what good is that going to do the kid? It will have serious implications mentally on that child. He probably feels bad enough and guilty as it is, what will that teach him?

I feel bad for the people who lost their homes also. I hope that the people who lost their homes have insurance so they can rebuild. The kid should get some counseling after all this.

eom

of not knowing if their kid will be taken away.

The kid most likely did NOT know it would cause all that damage. Normal little boys play with matches. It's common they start fires.

It's uncommon that the fire spreads so crazy and create so much damage. The issue here was the dry land and hot weather. Any kid could have started that fire accidentally or on purpose and still not intended to burn down everything in site but just see a flame happen. Do kids ever plan to set fire to the "world"?

The call for his head is ridiculous. The stress they're giving the kids parents is too. It's wrong.

I hope the kids parents can find comfort in this time. I hope the people that lost their houses that want the kids head will start focusing on going forward instead of blaming a child instead of a whole lot of circumstances that all came together.

I have actually witnessed sparks from a locomotive start brush fires. We all need to come to terms with the fact that this is a messy life, and a messy universe, and drop the eye for an eye mentality when there was no intent of harm.

How many eons more before we evolve?