Records: W. Mifflin boy in shooting has been troubled

The 10-year-old boy who police say shot and killed his 6-year-old brother with their mother’s gun while the pair were alone in their West Mifflin home has lived a troubled life, according to court records.

The 10-year-old has been diagnosed with multiple psychiatric disorders and in 2015 suffered physical injuries that prompted police to file child endangerment and assault charges against his mother. The charges were later withdrawn.

Detectives are still investigating the circumstances of Wednesday’s shooting in the New Colony Mobile Home Park that killed Julian Hoffman, Allegheny County Police Superintendent Coleman McDonough said Friday. No one has been criminally charged, and authorities expect the investigation to wrap up next week.

But at this point, the investigation must be about more than just punitive measures, said Louis Kraus, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

“What really needs to be done is a careful, methodical assessment of this child, the family situation and social situation using psychology, social work and child psychiatry,” he said. “You’re not just assessing what happened here. You’ve lost one life and now you have the question of what will happen to this second life. Can you do something to help this second child?”

In September 2015, the 10year-old brother — then 8 -— was attending Weil Elementary School in the Hill District when staff there sent him to Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic because he was “acting out,” according to a criminal complaint filed against the boy’s mother.

As he was admitted to the hospital, medical personnel noticed numerous bruises on the boy’s stomach, back and legs and alerted the county’s office of Children, Youth and Families.

In the ensuing investigation, the boy’s mother, who works as a paralegal, told authorities that she hit her son with a wire from a video gaming system because she couldn’t control the boy.

She told authorities he had been lighting fires in his bedroom, hiding knives under his bed and under the bed of his then-4-year-old brother. She said the older boyhad been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and oppositional defiant disorder. She also said he became physically aggressive when she tried to discipline him.

The mother said she didn’t want to hurt the boy but needed to use the wire to control him, according to the complaint. Pittsburgh police charged her with child endangerment and assault. Those charges were later dropped.

The criminal complaint does not say what prompted staff at Weil to send the boy to the hospital. Pittsburgh Public Schools spokeswoman Ebony Pugh said Friday that school employees make such decisions on a case-by-case basis and consider each child’s specific circumstances.

Typically, she said, a student would be referred to Western Psych if the student’s behavior “poses a threat to themselves or others,” she said.

A cousin of the mother, who did not give his name, said the 10-year-old “always had a little bit of an edge to him.” The cousin said he knew nothing about the circumstances of the shooting. The mother and other close family members could not be reached for comment.

Dr. Kraus said the boy’s diagnosed disorders could have affected his decision to pick up the gun but don’t necessarily make violent intent more likely.

“With ADHD you have a proclivity for impulsive behavior,” he said. “The issue here are the questions you don’t know the answers to. Did he pick up the gun thinking he would scare his brother and it went off by accident? You don’t know if he picked it up with the intent wanting to kill his brother, or he was just being impulsive.”

Oppositional defiant disorder typically is expressed through verbal defiance, Dr. Kraus said, rather than physical violence. And he emphasized it is impossible to say anything for sure without a completing thorough assessment of the boy and his family situation.

What trauma, he wondered, resulted in the boy’s post-traumatic stress diagnosis? How did the boy have such easy access to a loaded gun?

“And why,” he asked, “were a troubled 10-year-old and 6-year-old left home alone?”