11th Grader says he beat mother, put her in oven over a Playstation

[RamboLiberal]

Even in a city where murder occurs almost daily, what Kendall Anderson confessed to doing to his mother after she took away his PlayStation 2 stands out.

A claw hammer, a hot oven and a stick were the weapons he used to slay her, according to the macabre confession to police that came to light yesterday during a preliminary hearing for the 11th-grader at the Daniel Boone School.

After hearing the ghastly story, Municipal Judge Karen Yvette Simmons ordered Anderson to stand trial on charges of murder, abuse of a corpse and possession of an instrument of crime.

The youth, whose eyes repeatedly darted from the judge to his defense attorney, said nothing during the hearing.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20110216_Cops__Son_says_he_beat_mother__put_her_in_oven.html

I have no problem if they lock this creep away for the rest of his life!

[slackmaster]

1. No mention of a father. That poor child must be an orphan now.

:cry:

[Brilliantrocket]

4. I REALLY hope this is sarcasm.

[qazplm]

8. well a couple of things are obvious to me

1. this kid is broken beyond repair and separation from society is really the only option.

2. since I do not believe in inherent evil, this is a failure in multiple ways. Now to be clear, I don't mean anyone but this kid is responsible for what happened. 11th grade is old enough to completely understand just how horrible this is and to control oneself from doing it. However, a lot of things had to happen bad along the way in his development to get to where he is capable of doing what he did.

So to me, it's poor kid, poor mom, and poor society that something like this happened. There are no winners and I reject the easy "he's a monster" explanation some will place on this. It's more complicated than that, although, no doubt at this point, he IS a monster (see 1) and thus we can't take the risk of him being part of society ever again.

[slackmaster]

9. Yes. Do you remember the trial of the Menendez brothers in California?

They murdered their parents in their Beverly Hills home. During the trial, their defense attorneys attempted to elicit sympathy from the jury by mentioning that the young men were now orphans.

[qazplm]

12. I'm not commenting on the "orphan" comment

he wasn't an orphan when he committed this crime, he became one because of it. It would be a pretty silly defense attempt IMO and as an attorney I'd never try it.

I WOULD however try a defense of looking at all of the things that had to go wrong in this kids upbringing and environment to get to where he is now. Not to excuse what he did, he needs life in prison, probably without parole, but there is a possibility that life with parole is a better option for an 11th grade kid, even in this situation.

[JI7]

5. poor child ? he beat his mother to death over video games

[alphafemale]

6. He beat his mother in the face and head with a claw hammer in her bed.

Then she was still breathing so he dragged her to an oven, propped her in it and burned her flesh then finished her off with a chair leg.

And you feel sorry for him because he's an orphan.

I hope this little freak is locked away for the rest of his life and never sees a blade of grass again.

Let alone a Playstation.

[slackmaster]

10. I had hoped that more people would remember the trial of the Menendez Brothers

I guess I'm getting old.

[alphafemale]

14. I suspected sarcasm

But there are some DUers who would say that kind of thing and mean it.

I remember the Menendez goons. And seem to recall that their lawyer also tried garner sympathy for one of them because he had lost his hair young and suffered terribly because he wore a rug.

[REP]

15. Also the definition of "chutzpah"

Old joke; murders parents then begs for mercy as an orphan. And a defense strategy, as you mentioned.

[NuclearDem]

2. Sick, horribly, horribly sick.

[Ian David]

3. Do they have PlayStation in prison? n/t

[RKP5637]

7. Each day the world gets a bit sicker. Maybe we just know about it more easily. Don't know. n/t

[AnneD]

11. I work around teens....

and I am telling you, their minds aren't fully functional even by the 11th grade sometimes. I think the frontal lobe doesn't kick in for a while. And then I see an increasing number of kids that fail to bond to other humans. I am not blaming the video game but it is an isolating choice of activities. If she was a single mom, she may not have had time to be with him. This is a sad waste of two lives.

While the crime was heinous, I hope he can be rehabilitated. He needs some heavy duty theraphy and I don't think he will get that in prison.

[qazplm]

16. I've worked around teens before too

and while I agree with you they aren't fully functional, they are functional enough to make this kind of crime something that much of the responsibility for this is fairly placed on this young man's shoulders.

Is it all his fault? No, takes a lot of bad upbringing and bad things happening to a kid to get him to this point.
Is he redeemable? I don't know. This is really just almost unimaginably brutal. This is the kind of broken that I struggle to see how it can be fixed.
I agree with you that prison is no place where rehabilitation occurs so sadly, even if there is a sliver of a chance for rehabilitation and redemption of this kid, it ain't ever going to happen.
Having said that, not sure there'd be any place where he could be put back together again since he appears to have been broken his whole life.

[tblue37]

18. You are quite right about the unfinished mental development of a teen. The part of the brain

that controls impulses and weighs consequences doesn't finish developing until about age 25. Of course an 11th grader is responsible whhen he commits such a horrible crime, but it is nevertheless true that a teenager's brain is not fully develoepd.

Brain imaging studies suggest that the brain continues to develop through adolescence and into young adulthood (age 25 years). During adolescence, the parts of the brain that are responsible for expressing emotions and for seeking gratification tend to mature sooner than the regions of the brain that control impulses and that oversees careful decision making. As one expert puts it the teenage brain"has a well-developed accelerator but only a partly developed brake."

http://www.mentorfoundation.org/brain.php?nav=4-160

[AnneD]

20. I like that analogy...

"has a well-developed accelerator but only a partly developed brake."

I usually dub them as walking hormones or terrible twos with car keys. That sums them up well. With so many violent images in our daily life it is easy to see how this can come about.

While I do believe in capital punishment, this is not one of those occasions. He is not an adult and he is not in his right mind. The crime is heinous but he needs help. I don't really know what is the proper punishment in cases like this. I do not possess the wisdom of Solomon.

[udbcrzy2]

13. Wow, no remorse either and it was his own mother

I hope they put this animal away forever. How could he ever be let out into the community again. He did this over his mother taking away his game machine. Wonder how he's going to like being someone's bitch in prison?

[Mnemosyne]

17. Amygdala

The amygdala (Latin, corpus amygdaloideum) is an almond-shape set of neurons located deep in the brain's medial temporal lobe.

Shown to play a key role in the processing of emotions, the amygdala forms part of the limbic system.

In humans and other animals, this sub-cortical brain structure is linked to both fear responses and pleasure.

Its size is positively correlated with aggressive behavior across species.

In humans, it is the most sexually-dimorphic brain structure, and shrinks by more than 30% in males upon castration.

Conditions such as anxiety, autism, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and phobias are suspected of being linked to abnormal functioning of the amygdala, owing to damage, developmental problems, or neurotransmitter imbalance.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/a/amygdala.htm

[Initech]

19. WTF.

I got my video games taken away a lot as a kid, but I never thought to kill anyone over it! :yoiks: