Police alleged that a 12-year-old Texas girl shot her father and then herself in an apparent "murder plot" she made with another girl to kill their respective families, according to the Parker County Sheriff's Office, per CNN. The shooting occurred at 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday at a home in Weatherford, Northwest Parker County, about 30 miles west of Fort Worth.
Sheriff's deputies found the girl on the street with a headshot wound and a handgun underneath her. On the other hand, her 38-year-old dad was found inside the family's home with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Both victims were immediately taken to local hospitals by air ambulance, and their conditions were still unknown Monday morning.
The Sheriff's investigators stated that the juvenile was believed to have shot her father, fled the scene, and shot herself.
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Tweens have planned the entire incident
During the probe, authorities discovered that the tween had planned several weeks to murder her family, including her pets, and had been in contact with another juvenile female from Lufkin, more than two hundred miles southeast of Parker County.
According to the authorities, the juvenile from Lufkin, whose age was not released, had also planned to kill her father but did not go through with it. The two young girls had arranged for the 12-year-old to drive to Lufkin, pick up the second girl, and run away together to Georgia. The authorities are still unsure how the two girls knew each other. The Lufkin girl was charged with criminal conspiracy in planning the murder plot. However, it is still unclear whether charges have been filed against the injured girl.
Nearly half of all youth arrests are made due to theft, simple assault, murder, drug abuse, disorderly conduct, and curfew violations. Statistics show that theft is the most significant cause of youth arrests. Almost 60,000 youth below age 18 are incarcerated in juvenile jails in the United States.
The most widespread and leading reason for juvenile crime is violence at home, per Nicewicz. A home is where the children learn what kind of a person to grow into; thus, if violence is all they have experienced at home, most likely, they grow to become violent people.
Severe mental illness drove a teenager to kill his family
Another teen from New Jersey fatally shot four of his family members using a semi-automatic rifle just before the ball dropped on New Year's Eve in 2017.
Scott Kologi, 16 at the time of the incident, now 20, killed his 18-year-old sister, Brittany Kologi; his mother, Linda Kologi, 44; his father, Steven Kologi, 42. He also killed his grandfather's companion, 70-year-old Mary Schulz.
Kologi was convicted in February on all charges, including four counts of first-degree murder, and has been sentenced to 150 years in prison. In court, Kologi's defense attorney argued that his severe mental illness led him to kill his family and asked for a sentence of 30 years.
Defense Attorney, Emeka Nkwuo, told People that Kologi is a mentally ill child who begged his mother for help and never actually got it.
