Watching the national news is rarely ever a balm for one's soul. Last week's news about an 8-year-old boy shooting his father and another man who was renting a room at their home in St. Johns, Ariz., was puzzling and chilling.

Some details have emerged about the crime before a judge issued a gag order on the police and lawyers on Monday, and the information raises more questions than answers.

According to a New York Times article, prosecutors have charged the child with both murders, a crime he has already confessed to committing. The prosecutors told the Times that the boy shot each man at least four times with a .22-caliber rifle, which had to be reloaded after each shot.

Both men were shot in the chest and the head.

The police have investigated the child's school and home life, expecting to find evidence of abuse, but have found no evidence to support these theories.

That's the chilling part. According to the folks that study these things, from 1976 to 2005, there were 62 cases in the United States in which a 7- or 8-year-old was arrested on murder charges. Only two of those cases involved a child killing a parent. Children younger than 7 who commit killings are not charged in most states.

In cases in which a child kills a parent, the child is typically a teenager and usually acts for one of three reasons, psychologists say. Most often, the child has suffered years of physical or sexual abuse. Others kill because of severe mental illness. And some have extreme antisocial or psychopathic tendencies -- a child who is used to getting his way and kills out of anger.

According to Kathleen M. Heide, a criminology professor at the University of South Florida, the boy is so young, that he could have acted out of immaturity or impulse. Heide adds that in children as young as 8, parts of the brain that weigh decisions and consequences are so underdeveloped that a child might not understand the finality of death.

According to the Times report, the boy had been trained by his father, an avid hunter, to shoot prairie dogs. Some psychologists say that might have played a role in this tragedy.

The father was shot in the head and the chest as he was coming up the stairs. The second victim, who was outside talking with his wife on his cellphone, told his wife that he thought the child was calling him. He was on the porch on his way into the house when he was shot in the chest and head, the authorities said.

Where do you even begin to try to make sense of this? Many children at age 8 still believe in Santa Claus. What do the authorities do with this child? If he is tried and convicted of a double homicide, where does he serve his sentence? With adults?

Who will ultimately pay the price for these deaths?

All of these questions have no good answers. Unfortunately, we have all become so numbed to unspeakable acts of violence that we desperately want the "rational" explanation that the child was abused, disturbed or bullied. If we somehow knew that, in our twisted rationalization, we could somehow find a way to cope with the incident.

But we don't have the benefit of a tawdry, despicable backstory to comfort us. We have an 8-year-old boy systematically shooting two adults, reloading after each and every shot.

It will get blamed on television or video games and our society's disconnect with reality. It may get blamed on the father for arming and teaching his son to hunt at a young age. But rest assured, it will get blamed on anything or anyone but the boy.

To blame the child -- that way lies madness.

As always, I welcome your comments. You can reach me by email at tstangl@lemarscomm.net, telephone 712-546-7031, x40 or toll free 1-800-728-0066 x40.

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