An 11-year-old Pennsylvania boy allegedly shot his father to death after previously having his Nintendo Switch handheld gaming system taken away.
The boy is facing criminal homicide charges after a 13 January shooting at his family’s home in Duncannon Borough.
As put in court documents obtained and reported by WGAL News 8, the case illustrates how easily children can access guns in the US, where firearms are ubiquitous.
The victim was reportedly discovered in the bedroom he shared with his wife, which court documents say is connected to their son’s bedroom by a closet.
Police reported it was the child’s birthday, and he had entered the bedroom shouting: “Daddy’s dead.” Troopers at the scene also reportedly said that they heard the son tell his mother: “I killed Daddy.”
Police said the shooting occurred after the couple had gone to bed shortly past midnight. The child reportedly told authorities that he had had a good day with his parents, but the documents reportedly state that he became “mad” when his father told him it was time to go to bed.
According to the news outlet, the court document says that the boy told police he found a key to the gun safe in his father’s drawer in his parent’s bedroom. He reportedly unlocked it while attempting to locate his Nintendo Switch – which had previously been taken away from him – and found a gun.
Yeah, my kid is way too unpredictable, there’s is absolutely no way that I could ever have a firearm in my home or else this will be me or my wife, 100% certainty. We regularly get punched, kicked, bitten, etc almost daily. When he’s angry (which is often) he just can’t think, and then he regrets his actions later, but he does some dumb shit when he’s angry…
You sound like you’re talking about a 50 year old alcoholic abuser that got 3 divorces and is now dirt poor because the women always won the lawsuits
Did you fail to read the part that says the child is autistic and 2025 was a rough year for him? And that he was recommended for special help because he’d started showing early signs of violent behaviour?
Bro. You can’t just accept this. Get the kid in therapy before he becomes a horrible adult.
Harsh? Come on, man. Help the kid!
We have more professionals involved than you’d believe. Trust me, we’re working on it, but change is a slow road. You may have heard for instance that therapy only works if you want to change, well if a nine year old isn’t mature enough to want to change or be willing to participate in the process, well that also slows things down.
At the risk of being blunt here, I’m not really looking for parenting advice, I’m actually pretty sure we’re doing a decent job despite a particularly hard kid with some very real challenges.
But I do sincerely see that you mean well, and want to help, so thank you.
I’ve not had kids, but I’ve had many dogs. It’s a similar thing where people who have had a few good dogs look at a ‘bad dog’ and blame the owner. The dog needs training, or discipline, or whatever… And they’ve never had a dog that had issues. Until you do get that one stubborn little asshole where nothing works. Yes, we’ve tried that- the dog is willfully just a little asshole. Still love 'em, still give them the best life you can- but you know them too well and just know that they are going to be a pain and do bad things no matter what. All you can do is try to mitigate the damage and make sure they don’t hurt themselves.
For our dog that was like that- it just took a long time for him to grow old enough to slow down. Then he became the sweetest and best dog ever.
Good luck on the kid. Hope they figure it out sooner rather than later.
As someone who once was that 9 year old, and has my own child I’ll probably go through the same thing with, hugs and there is a light at the end of the tunnel
I have two boys with autism. Some of this resonates. Have you had him tested? I imagine you have but just in case. Good luck.
47 year old autist, hells yeah. Easier learning to deal with malfunctioning regulation as a kid than as an adult after a string of fuckups
I mean catching it early is the best as opposed to finding out later. Best of luck
Hey man, thanks for responding. I apologize for the unwanted judgment and I wish you and your kid the best.
Cheers.
My daughter has “reactive attachment disorder” and she can behave like this. She is adopted from a rough first few years of life and being in the foster system for a while before we took her and her older brother in.
Like you said below, as she gets older she is getting better at controlling impulses, but not 100% and so when she does get upset she is stronger and more dangerous. 2024-2025 school year was super rough for us. She went to the ER many times, as it was the only support we could utilize for the kind of violence she was exhibiting, and eventually we were able to get her into a child psych unit for a few weeks and then into residential treatment. It was tough; we had to push back on very judgemental hospital staff, drive am hour one-way for weeks to visit her in residential, call the governor’s ombudsmen, and just generally do a ton of work to get her the help she needed.
At one point, the psych unit’s family coordinator, who’s job was basically to convince us to bring her back home after a week of them basically only sedating her asked if we were ready to bring her back home. And when we told her that we weren’t because we expected her to rapidly move back to violent behaviors, she insisted we were going to have to, so I asked “and what if we don’t?” She threatened to call DHS. So I leaned into the camera and said “great, let’s do that then”. I believe this to be the only reason we got a successful referral to residential treatment.
All of this was necessary treatment for my daughter. She is doing much better now. She has an IEP, which has placed her in an “emotional support classroom” and is on some good meds that are definitely helping. That said, she is still exhibiting violent behaviors from time to time. The trend is moving in the right direction, but she still has rough days.
So anyway, I encourage you to seek help with this. It can be VERY HARD. You may be forced to make tough decisions and push back against people who are very judgemental and even making scary threats about you being an abusive or neglectful parent. They do not know your child. They do not know you. They do not know your home life. You must do what is right to being peace and safety to your home, even with these challenges. Good luck. Please feel free to reach out with questions or a non-judgemental ear to bounce off of.
Wow, thank you for sharing all of that. I know you’ve been through a lot, as it turns out adoption is not an easy road. Yeah I’d say we’re in the same boat here a lot of ways, we also adopted. He was 6 when he moved in with us, and he came with a lot of baggage. He apparently moved around the system a lot before he got to us, had a lot of different homes, and some of those were not good for him either.
So yeah, he definitely still has some problematic behaviors, he has not figured out how to be respectful to the people around him. But he’s beginning to be able to actually talk about his emotions, at least a bit. And the violence is was down from where it was a couple years ago. And OH MY GOD it was amazing when we found a medication that actually helped him! I have a new appreciation for SSRIs (they never did much for our first kid, so I had my doubts). But when we started him on that, I honestly I feel like that week was the start of a new era, like all of a sudden he was actually able to hear what people around him were saying, rather than just hearing his own anxieties reflected back. (The next goal is to get him to care about what other people are saying *sigh*) But yeah, that was still a turning point, it felt like he started learning how to interact with people for the first time that week.
Anyway, I don’t really like to get into all of this on the web, you really don’t know how long things can live online and I don’t want any of this to come back and embarrass him or anything. But yeah, thanks for reaching out I appreciate it more than I can express. And of course feel free to DM me any time if you want a non-judgmental ear too, I know how difficult and thankless this role can be.
Out of curiosity though, what state are you in? I know the state agencies that handle adoption can vary a lot from state to state and sometimes the services on offer to help out can be lacking. I think we are probably lucky to live in MA, I think the services available here are pretty good, even if DCF (dept of children and families) is currently a mess with budgets being slashed.
Have you considered having him visit a therapist?
He may have unresolved emotions that would benefit him (and people around him) to come out.
Child therapists pretty much “play” with them so it’s something kids don’t get annoyed/bored (or even give them a lot of thoughts)
We have a whole lot of professionals involved. He certainly has unresolved emotions, as well as emotional delay and two other diagnoses. Don’t worry, we’re on it, there’s just a lot of work to do.
❤️ Glad to hear that and all the best with your work!
How old are they?
9 now. As he gets older the situation is getting better. But then again, he punches harder too.