Prosecutor: Boy, 10, shot his neo-Nazi dad
Source: Agencies |
November 1, 2012, Thursday
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THE 10-year-old son of a neo-Nazi leader told his younger sister that he planned to shoot their father, then a day later he took a gun from his parents' bedroom and fired one bullet into his father's head as the man slept on a couch, according to a prosecutor in California.
The boy's father, Jeff Hall, was an out-of-work plumber who had said he believed in a white breakaway nation.
Hall, 32, joined the group and organized rallies at synagogues and a day labor site after his sister-in-law was killed six years ago by a hit-and-run driver who was an illegal immigrant.
In opening statements at the boy's murder trial in juvenile court on Tuesday, Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Michael Soccio dismissed the notion that Hall's neo-Nazi beliefs "conditioned" the child to kill. Instead, Soccio said, the boy was a violent and angry child who'd been expelled from multiple schools.
He also said the boy, now 12, suspected his father was going to leave his stepmother and he didn't want the family to split up.
"You'll learn that (the child) would have shot his father even if he'd been a member of the Peace and Freedom Party. It made no difference," Soccio said, before showing the court photos of Hall playing tea party with his young children. "They lived a relatively normal life."
The boy with light brown hair sat quietly in court next to his attorney and wore a purple polo shirt and glasses. He showed little emotion when the prosecution flashed photos through a projector of his blood-spattered father.
Defense attorney Matthew Hardy countered in his opening statement that his client had grown up in an abusive and violent environment and learned it was acceptable to kill people who were a threat. Hall taught his son to shoot guns, and took him to neo-Nazi rallies and once to the Mexican border to teach him how to "make sure he knew what to do to protect this place from the Mexicans," Hardy said.
"If you were going to create a monster, if you were going to create a killer, what would you do?" he said. "You'd put him in a house where there's domestic violence, child abuse, racism."
The defense also suggested that the boy's stepmother, Krista McCary, goaded the child into killing Hall because her husband planned to leave her for another woman.
McCary told a police officer at the scene that she had killed her husband, but later recanted and said she lied to protect her stepson, whom she'd raised since infancy. She has pleaded guilty to one felony count of child endangerment and criminal storage of a firearm in the case.
The boy has a history of being expelled from school for violence, starting at age five when he stabbed a teacher with a pencil on the first day of kindergarten, Soccio said. He also tried to strangle a teacher with a telephone cord a few years later, he said.
If a judge finds he murdered Hall, the boy could be held in state custody until he is 23 years old. The state currently houses fewer than 900 juveniles.
The boy's father, Jeff Hall, was an out-of-work plumber who had said he believed in a white breakaway nation.
Hall, 32, joined the group and organized rallies at synagogues and a day labor site after his sister-in-law was killed six years ago by a hit-and-run driver who was an illegal immigrant.
In opening statements at the boy's murder trial in juvenile court on Tuesday, Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Michael Soccio dismissed the notion that Hall's neo-Nazi beliefs "conditioned" the child to kill. Instead, Soccio said, the boy was a violent and angry child who'd been expelled from multiple schools.
He also said the boy, now 12, suspected his father was going to leave his stepmother and he didn't want the family to split up.
"You'll learn that (the child) would have shot his father even if he'd been a member of the Peace and Freedom Party. It made no difference," Soccio said, before showing the court photos of Hall playing tea party with his young children. "They lived a relatively normal life."
The boy with light brown hair sat quietly in court next to his attorney and wore a purple polo shirt and glasses. He showed little emotion when the prosecution flashed photos through a projector of his blood-spattered father.
Defense attorney Matthew Hardy countered in his opening statement that his client had grown up in an abusive and violent environment and learned it was acceptable to kill people who were a threat. Hall taught his son to shoot guns, and took him to neo-Nazi rallies and once to the Mexican border to teach him how to "make sure he knew what to do to protect this place from the Mexicans," Hardy said.
"If you were going to create a monster, if you were going to create a killer, what would you do?" he said. "You'd put him in a house where there's domestic violence, child abuse, racism."
The defense also suggested that the boy's stepmother, Krista McCary, goaded the child into killing Hall because her husband planned to leave her for another woman.
McCary told a police officer at the scene that she had killed her husband, but later recanted and said she lied to protect her stepson, whom she'd raised since infancy. She has pleaded guilty to one felony count of child endangerment and criminal storage of a firearm in the case.
The boy has a history of being expelled from school for violence, starting at age five when he stabbed a teacher with a pencil on the first day of kindergarten, Soccio said. He also tried to strangle a teacher with a telephone cord a few years later, he said.
If a judge finds he murdered Hall, the boy could be held in state custody until he is 23 years old. The state currently houses fewer than 900 juveniles.
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