8-year-old arrested after attacking mom at Wal-Mart

An 8-year-old Port Orchard boy was arrested for reportedly assaulting his mother at Wal-Mart earlier this month, the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office reported.

According to the incident report, a deputy responded to the boy’s home shortly before 5 p.m. Jan. 14 and first spoke to the boy’s 37-year-old mother.

The deputy noted that she was “visibly shaken” and wet as she told him her son had been disobedient earlier when they were in the Wal-Mart store on Bethel Road.

She said the boy was arguing with his brother, then ran away from her and outside of the store. She said she chased him outside and found him hiding under a “big-rig.”

She said she had to pull him out from underneath the tractor-trailer, and when she did he punched, slapped, and kicked her, and spat on her. The mother told the deputy she felt as if she were going to throw up.

The deputy then went to contact the 8-year-old, whom he had seen kneeling on the floor near the kitchen. When the boy ran away from the deputy, he said he grabbed the boy’s clothing and “experience(ed) for myself what (the mother) had previously described.

“(The boy) became so enraged I later commented to (the mother) that I had never seen anything like that before. It was as if he had suddenly become possessed by demons,” the deputy wrote. “(The boy) uttered profanities, thrashed about and screamed — literally in a spitting rage, and I held him down to detain him.”

After calling the Kitsap County Juvenile Detention Center to verify that he could book in an 8-year-old, the deputy handcuffed the boy, whom he said continued to struggle “profusely,” ignore every direction he was given and constantly tried to escape.

Once inside the deputy’s car, the suspect raged on, escaping his seatbelt and kicking both the security divider and the right passenger door.

The suspect told the deputy that everything was his brother’s fault, he was “going to get a shotgun and kill his brother,” and that he should have killed him earlier, because then he wouldn’t be getting arrested.

This is not the first time a South Kitsap 8-year-old has been arrested for assault.

In 2004, a second-grader at Orchard Heights Elementary School was arrested for allegedly assaulting the school principal, assistant principal and three students during recess one afternoon.

The boy’s foster mother also reported numerous assaults had occurred at home, both with her and the boy’s siblings.

At the time, Kitsap County Juvenile Division Deputy Prosecutor Todd Dowell said 8-years of age is the youngest a defendant can be and still be considered capable of a crime, according to Washington State laws.

“If you are 7 years old or younger, you are considered incapable of committing a crime,” Dowell said. “(It is believed) you can’t form the requisite intent.”

Defendants between the ages of 8 and 11, Dowell said, are presumed incapable, and the state has the burden of proving capacity — that the defendant knew what they did was wrong.

“(That proof) can come in the form of testimony from the child, or from a parent or teacher, such as if they discussed with the child that it was wrong,” he said

After the age of 12, Dowell said, capacity is presumed.

Dowell explained that capacity — strictly a matter of age — is a separate issue from competency, which deals with a defendant’s sanity, or whether they are mentally able to understand what they did.

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