Child Murder - By Other Children

By Other Children

In most countries, there are very few cases where children are killed by other young children. According to the U.S. Department of Justice statistics for 1996, one in five murders of children are committed by other children. Several murders by children have gained prominent media exposure. One was the killing on 12 February 1993 of the almost three-year-old boy James Bulger by two ten-year-old boys in Bootle, England, UK. He was beaten and stoned before his unconscious body was left on train tracks to make it look like a train hit him. Also, in 1968 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England there was the trial of 10-year old Mary Bell. She was convicted of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility in the deaths of toddlers Martin Brown and Brian Howe. She was released in 1980 at the age of 23. In 1998, 8 year old Madelyn Clifton was killed by 14 year old Josh Phillips.

Although the United States certainly has an unusually high number of killings of children by other children, it is most often the case that the perpetrators and victims are teenagers, rather than young children. In many such cases, the youthful perpetrator is tried as an adult for their crime.

In 1992, after the fatal shooting of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis as he left the Cabrini–Green public housing project for school, the Chicago Tribune put every child murder on the front page (generally no murders were front page news). 62 child murders were reported that year.

Multiple deaths in one incident, such as the 1999 Columbine High School massacre tend to gather the most media attention but are statistically scarce.