Teen who killed at 8 to lose his restrictions
Boy who murdered dad, friend about to turn 18
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — The call came in to police dispatch just after 5 p.m. on a cold November evening in the small Arizona town of St. Johns: There was a body on the front porch of a house.
Detective Debbie Neckel fastened her bulletproof vest and headed out. As she and Sgt. Lucas Rodriguez approached the blue two-story home, Neckel fixed her eyes on two people, a teenager and an 8-year-old boy standing nearby.
Rodriguez walked toward the house, and Neckel toward the boy, whom she knew from the neighborhood. His arms were outstretched, and he was near tears.
“‘My dad, my dad. My dad’s dead,’” Neckel recalled him saying as she gave her first interview about the case to The Associated Press. “‘I think my dad’s dead.’”
The boy’s father, Vincent Romero, 29, was found face-down on the staircase inside. The body on the porch was Romero’s friend and co-worker, Timothy Romans, 39, who rented a room there.
A swirl of suspects would emerge before a truth was revealed that no one saw coming: The 8-year-old killed both men.
The child came home Nov. 5, 2008, and killed his father with a single-shot .22-caliber rifle, holding the bullets in his small hand to reload after each shot. He called to Romans that something was wrong, then shot him, too.
Nine years later, the boy is days from his 18th birthday with a chance to move on from a crime that has defined his life. He will sign paperwork Friday freeing him from intensive probation, psychological evaluations, travel restrictions and having his every move monitored.
“Things will be fundamentally different,” said his attorney, Ron Wood.
The Associated Press isn’t identifying the teen because of his age at the time of the shootings.
The transition will be easier because of the support network he built since pleading guilty to negligent homicide in Romans’ death, said Wood and Apache County Attorney Michael Whiting, who prosecuted the case.
The charge for killing his father was dropped. Whiting said at the time that it was in the boy’s best interest not to be forced to acknowledge killing his father.
The boy first was held at a youth treatment center near Phoenix, then moved to a group home and then a foster home. Besides a trio of probation violations when he was 12, he’s avoided trouble. He will likely stay in the foster home beyond his 18th birthday and continue treatment until he’s 21, Whiting said.
His probation officer declined to discuss the case, and periodic evaluations of the boy that might shed light on his treatment are sealed.
Romero’s mother, Liz Castillo, has been the boy’s biggest supporter, regularly attending hearings and visiting him. She declined to comment but said early on she would not give up on her grandson.
Neckel knew the boy from her neighborhood in the town of about 3,500 near the New Mexico border. He was the child who jumped on the trampoline with his cousin, played outside with his dog, tried to coax a cat from a culvert, called her “Mrs. Neckel” and said, “Have a good day at work” when she pulled out of her driveway.
After their interview, she went into the restroom and cried. Her regret, she said, was not including him in her suspect pool from the start.
Police investigated possible abuse but found nothing that would have warranted charges, Neckel said.
Neckel developed what she called an unreasonable fear of children for about a year after the boy was charged. But she said seeing her grandchildren on the holidays shortly after the shootings helped her cope.
She spent her free time online researching kids who kill, trying to better understand what happened in the most difficult case of her police career.
She found promise in stories of two people who killed as teenagers and later became a college professor and a crime novelist.
“I can’t give up on a kid,” Neckel said. “I hope that releasing him isn’t the worst mistake ever made. But he was a little kid. You have to give him a chance.”