Boy, 14, charged as adult in clothes-dryer murder of 4-year-old

[Vinyl]

Quote:

A 14-year-old suspect in the murder of a 4-year-old boy found drowned and then stuffed into a clothes dryer in Mendota, California, has been charged as an adult, authorities said Tuesday. Fresno County, California, District Attorney Elizabeth A. Egan said Raul Renato Castro was charged with special circumstances, including murder during a child molestation, sodomy, kidnapping and murder of a witness to prevent testimony. Castro faces separate felony charges of kidnapping, sodomy and child molestation, Egan said. Under California law, a 14-year-old is not eligible for the death penalty or a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, according to a statement from Egan's office. If found guilty, the boy could receive no more than 32 years to life plus 15 years. The incident began Friday afternoon, when Alex Christopher Mercato's parents discovered that the child, who had been playing outside their house, was missing, Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims told reporters Monday. The parents called police, who began to search the neighborhood and nearby parks in Mendota, 33 miles west of Fresno, she said. Soon, the FBI was called in. On Saturday, authorities resumed the search door-to-door. They did not have to go far. In the house next door to the Mercatos, authorities discovered the boy's body stuffed inside a dryer in a closet, Mims said. An autopsy determined he had drowned. The teenager, who had been the only member of his family who was at home on Friday afternoon, was arrested and booked into the juvenile justice center, Mims said. Castro is the sole suspect in the case, she said. He is to be arraigned Wednesday in Fresno County Superior Court.

Source

[ilovepinkhearts]

oh my...if he is found guilty he should get the maximum that is allowed!
why in the world is a 14yr old boy sexually abusing a 4yr old and then killing them??
once again i ask what is wrong with our world!?!?! so this makes me feel better about
being so protective of my children!

[Jahpson]

Quote:

Raul Renato Castro was charged with special circumstances, including murder during a child molestation, sodomy, kidnapping and murder of a witness to prevent testimony.

what???

[TheWinglessBird]

Urgh. That is just disgusting. Who brought this young boy up? What 14 year old could do such a thing, let alone a man?? Creep. Sounds like the kid was possessed!

[ShimmaPuff]

It's just the modern version of performing a ritual sacrifice to appease the evil spirits that caused the mental illness.

[Vinyl]

More details...

Quote:

A 14-year-old California boy told police he drowned his 4-year-old neighbor on Friday because the child had threatened to tell his mother the older boy had molested him, according to an affidavit made public Wednesday. Raul Renato Castro has been charged in Fresno County as an adult, with special circumstances including murder during a child molestation, sodomy, kidnapping and murder of a witness to prevent testimony, according to the district attorney's office. He faces separate felony charges of kidnapping, sodomy and child molestation. The affidavit, filed by the Fresno County Sheriff's Department, says Castro told investigators he lured the victim, Alex Christopher Mercato, into his apartment "by telling the victim he had something to show him." Police have said no one else was in the Mendota, California, house at the time. Castro then talked the boy into entering the bathroom, according to the document. Castro said he then sodomized the toddler, after which "the victim tripped over the carpet, fell, and hit the back of his head on the bathtub," the affidavit says. "Castro said the victim started crying and told Castro he was going to tell his mother. Castro said he panicked and decided to kill the victim by drowning him in the bathtub. "Castro turned on the water to the bathtub and filled it up just enough to put the victim's face underwater and drowned him. Castro said he held the victim underwater 2-4 minutes. Castro got into the bathtub with the victim, held him down until the victim died." "Castro then carried the victim over his left shoulder and put him [in]... the clothes dryer to conceal him." The incident occurred Friday afternoon, after Mercato's parents discovered that their child, who had been playing outside their house, was missing, Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims told reporters Monday. The parents called police, who searched the neighborhood and nearby parks in Mendota, 33 miles west of Fresno, she said. Soon, the FBI was called in. On Saturday, authorities resumed the search and found the body stuffed inside the dryer in the apartment next door. An autopsy determined the victim had drowned. Under California law, a 14-year-old is not eligible for the death penalty or a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. If found guilty, Castro could receive no more than 32 years to life plus 15 years.

Source

[Cami725]

A 14 year old!?

[dmitchell15]

What I want to know is where was the 4 year old's parents? Surely somebody was supposed to watch him. This is sick and the 14 year old needs to be tried as an adult and get the maximum amount of punishment allowed. Sick individual.

[vintageromance]

^ Supposedly, the 4 year old's parents were inside, while he was playing outside in their yard. I personally don't see why they would think it would be safe to leave a 4 year old outside unattended, and being next door neighbors the families might have been on familiar terms so the 4 year old probably knew the 14 year old and thought nothing of going over to his house. I wonder if the families may have even been on such familiar terms that they knew each other and it may not have been so uncommon. I also have to wonder where the 14 year old's parents were. They were said to be "out of town" at the time, but didn't they see any warning signs that there was something mentally/morally wrong with this kid? Wasn't there red flags of some sort? I am glad he is being tried as an adult and he should get the maximum sentence possible.

[vbskull]

There are so many horrible stories in the news lately about teenagers committing horrible crimes. Are they on the rise or is it the internet just spreading news faster? I hate hearing stories about children being murdered. I hope the boy gets the max prison time and some serious therapy.

[bagaholic85]

Originally Posted by vintageromance

^ Supposedly, the 4 year old's parents were inside, while he was playing outside in their yard. I personally don't see why they would think it would be safe to leave a 4 year old outside unattended, and being next door neighbors the families might have been on familiar terms so the 4 year old probably knew the 14 year old and thought nothing of going over to his house. I wonder if the families may have even been on such familiar terms that they knew each other and it may not have been so uncommon. I also have to wonder where the 14 year old's parents were. They were said to be "out of town" at the time, but didn't they see any warning signs that there was something mentally/morally wrong with this kid? Wasn't there red flags of some sort? I am glad he is being tried as an adult and he should get the maximum sentence possible.

yea that time, but from the update it seems like he has been molesting the little boy for some time now.

how sad for everyone involved

[fabgrabs]

^ The local news said that the 14 y.o.'s mother babysat the 4 y.o. often...this is just so tragic.

[Aslan]

OMG, I am in TEARS reading this story. How could a 14 year old do something so evil! It hurts my heart to think about how this little boy suffered up until he died.

[ShimmaPuff]

Originally Posted by vbskull

There are so many horrible stories in the news lately about teenagers committing horrible crimes. Are they on the rise or is it the internet just spreading news faster?

I'll probably regret this, but I'd probably regret not saying it more, so...

Yes, and yes. Obviously, technology has made more news stories of all kinds available to more people.

Maybe not so obvious, societies, like individuals, make choices, and just as with individuals, those choices have consequences.

When a society, a culture, is not on the rise, there are other things that will be.

If you've clicked around the internets, and read comments about this story, a couple of things will stand out:

Few people are asking where this 14 year old got the idea to sexually abuse a 4 year old. This is not something that a healthy 14 year old just naturally does, even if they've read about it on a website or in a magazine.

The overwhelming sense of public reaction has to do with basically punishing a child for having an illness, very probably punishing a child for being a victim of abuse himself.

We don't see a lot of people asking, "what can we, as a society, do to prevent this from happening to other children?"

The emphasis is not on protection but revenge and punishment, not on preventing more stories like this, but on perpetuating the brutality, becoming part of it.

From one perspective, you look at human history, and you see so many advances in knowledge, so much potential for using that knowledge to move forward, to progress.

But shift your head a little, and just like a crystal with an aurora borealis finish, you see something completely different - a rejection of that knowledge, an aversion to the concept of moving forward, of improving ourselves, our environment, and in its place, not just a stubborn stagnation, but an active, almost compulsive clinging to obsolete ideas that harm us.

Most of us know, at least intellectually, that mental illness is neither a "lifestyle choice" nor the work of those proverbial "evil spirits," but just an illness.

Most of us, if pressed, will acknowledge that untreated mental illness can be very dangerous. It can result in acts that do great harm to, even take the lives of the patient himself as well as others.

Yet in a group, we consistently make collective choices that do not treat mental illness as a disease, but a stigma, a crime, an indication of "evil." We choose not to treat mental illness.

Instead of using all that knowledge, all those advances, to protect us, we try to take refuge in those antiquated, harmful beliefs that do the opposite!

Whether this child's illness is purely the result of chemical imbalance or other organic process, or whether it was precipitated or exacerbated by harm done to him by an adult with an untreated mental illness, somebody, somewhere, noticed something, and didn't want to think about it, didn't want to go there.

Maybe someone saw him crying, and turned away, "so they wouldn't embarrass" him, they told themselves.

Maybe a neighbor had a "weird" feeling about the house where he lived, about his family, about him, just a vague notion of creepiness, nothing really concrete to base it on, and so they shook it off, and forced themselves to just think about something else.

Maybe someone saw something, a touch, a word, a tone, either to the child, from him, or both, that didn't seem quite right. But, they said to themselves, it's none of my business.

Maybe someone perceived that something about him seemed a little - well, they weren't sure quite what. But, they said to themselves, "all kids that age can sometimes seem a little - well, I'm not sure quite what."

A teacher or counselor at school may have noticed something that their knowledge, their skills in using all those modern scientific advances, suggested might be a little troubling, a little off.

But it just didn't rise to the level of imperative and immediate action, and because mental and emotional illness do have such a cultural stigma, it is only natural that even a professional with specialized education in the field may tend to "err on the side of caution," because labeling a child as having mental illness can impact his future, even into adulthood, because mental illness is, in so many cases, basically considered by society to be a crime.

And suffering from the illness is not considered anywhere near "punishment" enough.

If it does emerge, and I am willing to bet that it will, that the child's illness was caused or worsened by he himself being the victim of harm done to him very similar to some of the things he did to the younger child, in the mind of society, that will not be "punishment" enough either.

There are people who right now, in the clarity of hindsight, are wishing they had made different choices, that they had at least followed up a little bit on those vague, unpleasant feelings, those half-formed thoughts and questions.

There are even more people who never knew either victim - and this story certainly has 2 victims, and probably more - who are horrified, repulsed, saddened and sickened just reading the news accounts.

Even expressions of the rawest, most brutal expressions of our basest, lowest human urges are presented as being on behalf of the younger victim.

But we see very, very few expressions of a desire to prevent the next story like this, all the stories like this, whether they make it into the newspapers or not, (and anyone who thinks that they all do needs the comfort of that thought for their own mental health).

Bishop Tutu once said "We are a work in progress."

The day when we can read a story like this and say "This child must get immediate help!
What awful things will have happened to him, that a child could do such things to another child! We must prevent this from happening again by getting treatment to people with such a dangerous and harmful illness!"

will be the day we have made a lump of progress more important, more valuable to our species than the day we learned to walk on two legs instead of four.

[karmenzsofia]

Nuts. Just nuts. Maybe he'll get sodomized in jail and learn a lesson, or two.