6-Year-Old's Murder Has Many in Mexico Seeking Answers to Youth Violence Randal C. Archibold - The New York Times
go to original May 22, 2015

A Mexican boy looks at a member of the U.S. Border Patrol standing guard on the border between El Paso in the United States and Ciudad Juárez in Mexico. (Jesús Alacazar/AFP)

The case has caused a wave of anguish: A 6-year-old boy in northern Mexico murdered and a group of five adolescents, who the authorities said were playing a game of “kidnap,” apprehended for the crime.

But three of the suspects, a 12-year-old boy and two 13-year-old girls, will not face imprisonment because of their ages, and that has unleashed a more complex set of emotions.

Some demanded changes to the law that sets restrictions on the incarceration of very young offenders while others denounced a lack of social and family programs that could help prevent such crimes.

On Saturday, the body of Christopher Raymundo Marquez Mora, 6, was found buried in a ditch near a stream in a poor neighborhood of Chihuahua, the capital of Chihuahua State.

His hands were bound, and based on a statement one of the young suspects gave to investigators, the police said that the group had taken Christopher last Thursday as part of a game that simulates a crime that has long been common all over Mexico: kidnapping.

They decided to kill him after he got hurt. They pelted him with rocks, strangled him with a stick and stabbed him.

Two of the youngsters in the group are 15 and will face charges that could land them in prison for 10 years if convicted.

Yet under Mexican law, there is no option to bring adult charges or incarcerate the other three because of their ages. If found culpable, they would instead enter a rehabilitation program under the auspices of the government’s family services agency.

Read the rest at The New York Times

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