Boy accused of killing child

Press, 9 February 1983, Page 6

Boy accused of killing child

PA Hamilton A boy. aged 13. accused of murder by inflicting fatal wounds on a girl, aged eight, was incapable of knowing he was doing wrong at the time, a doctor told the jury in a trial in the High Court at Hamilton yesterday. The medical superintendent of Tokanui Hospital, Dr H. R. Bennett, said the boy had told him that he had stabbed the girl several times with two knives until he heard her mother arrive (at the girl’s house). The witness said he believed that at the time of the stabbing the boy "was not capable of knowing that what he was doing was wrong or contrary to the law.”

The boy's trial is before Mr Justice Bisson and jury. Professor R. W. Medlicott, a witness for the defence, said the boy admitted taking the girl's panties down, then trying to strangle her to unconsciousness in the belief that she would not remember the incident.

The boy then suffered "accute situational reaction or disturbance," Professor Medlicott said. He said he considered the boy was unable to reason about his actions of stabbing the girl. “In my opinion we have an otherwise well adjusted boy going through a stage of sexual confusion — puberty

— who makes a sexual advance on an immature girl," he said.

Mr C. Q. M. Almao is prosecuting for the Crown, Mr R. A. Houston, Q.C., with Mr J. J. O’Shea, appear for the accused, whose name is suppressed.

The Court has been told that the dead girl’s mother came home to find her daughter lying on the lounge floor with a slashed throat. The woman had said she thought she saw the accused peering round the corner as she was taking her daughter to a doctor’s surgery. The boy’s father said he felt his son was too immature for sexual instruction.

Earlier report, page 15