Learn it! Speak it! Live it!
Bring Christmas to a child in need!
An 'urgency': Sensing threats to institutions of society, church leaders make declaration 
Click to Print
Include Comments
Boy blamed in blaze
A boy playing with matches has admitted to starting a California fire that ravaged 60 square miles and destroyed 21 homes. Now prosecutors are contemplating whether to press charges against the boy or his parents. It’s an unfortunate incident with devastating consequences, but he’s just a kid, and all kids make mistakes–even ones with the most vigilant parents. Is pressing charges really the right thing to do?
Topic: Newsworthy, WorldMagBlog
Keywords: california-fires
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
back to top18 Comments to “Boy blamed in blaze”
It seems unclear whether the boy is ten or twelve years old–certainly old enough to know the potential results, even if only on a small scale. I’d want to know more of the details leading up to the blaze before deciding if/how to press charges. The parents leaving him home alone for two days is different than Dad going inside to answer the phone while leaving a lighter on a table. Is the kid emotionally and mentally developed for his age?
The prosecutors are best equipped to decide.
Report comment to moderator
Yikes! All these hard cases being presented on here today.
Here’s another one I’m conflicted on. I guess it depends on the age of the kid, his intent, his past history (is he a “fire starter”?), etc. Was he aware of the potential devastating consequences of playing with matches. No matter how hard a parent tries, boys have always done dangerous things like playing with matches. Did his parents make him aware of the danger?
No doubt, this is a bad situation. But I don’t want the kid branded for life.
I just don’t know…
Report comment to moderator
What if the fire had been started by lightening? Does God get branded for life? Perhaps we should blame the shortsighted environmental movement for helping to restrict logging? Or the politicians who listened to the environmentalists?
I think it would be wrong to bring the weight of government down against this child. If you live in a tinderbox, should you not expect that at some point it may go up in flames?
Report comment to moderator
Yeah, this one’s a toughie. There are a lot of “it depends…”, most of which we don’t know. It seems good to include him and his parents in our prayers (among the thousands of others affected in some way by these fires).
Report comment to moderator
Not enough info. But, having come close to burning up our garage at that age in the course of an ill-conceived science experiment, I think that we must generally give the benefit of the doubt.
As a pediatrician friend of mine once said in the course of a legal case, “Everybody knows kids are impulsive and do stupid things. That’s why we hold their hands crossing the street”.
Report comment to moderator
As Romeny says, I just love America. We don’t need to argue about whether this 10 or 12 year boy should be prosecuted because we have people who do this work for us, and don’t need our advice. Besides this, we have a good thousand years of precedents to rely on.
Instead we can consider how easy it is for ordinary phenomenon such as construction, power lines and, yes, children, to cause conflagrations and chose what to do about it.
Report comment to moderator
Where is ZZ when we need him? I guess I’ll have to do it: It is all Bush’s fault (so the kid goes free).
Report comment to moderator
Not enough information.
Criminal charges may be moot. The civil lawsuits will probably destroy both this boy and his family.
Report comment to moderator
It’s no toughie. Burn him at the stake. What was good enough for great-great-great-great-great-great-grandpa should be good enough for us.
Report comment to moderator
What good is it going to do to prosecute the boy? He’s probably never gonna touch matches again in his life!
Report comment to moderator
I do wonder what the kids reaction was when he saw the massive fires on TV? Ten-to-one he was probably scared out of his gourd, (unless he’s a juvenile delinquent or something). Can you imagine having to tell your dad that the massive fire he’s watching on CNN was because you were playing with matches in the back yard? I hate to think what my daddy would have done to me!
Report comment to moderator
Unless it can be shown that the boy intentionally and maliciously started the blaze, it would be ridiculous to prosecute him for the fires. It’s a slippery slope argument to say that he is at fault. It’s like saying, “Without George Washington, the US would not exist, thus George Washington should be prosecuted for all the injustice done by the US at home and abroad for the last 230 years.”
Who is at fault? Those who built a bonfire in waiting and failed to protect it are guilty of negligence. Who lit the match is irrelevant. Lightning or some other accidental spark would have lit the bonfire eventually.
Report comment to moderator
With the limited info we have been given here:
There will most certainly be a civil lawsuit against the parents. How that will wind up, only a lawyer/insurance professional can probably say.
But criminal prosecution? This was by all appearances an accident arising from stupidity. No malicious intent, no crime.
Unless the kid has a history of arson/pyromania and his parents failed to take reasonable measures to restrain him in that regard, I don’t see the point of criminal prosecution.
Report comment to moderator
Frank I agree, I don’t think anyone has enough information.
Whatever money anyone could obtain by suing the parents would not be kind, as I’m sure they didn’t encourage their son to play with matches.
What good could come from taking everything away from this family, since it could never cover the cost of what has been lost. I’m sure the parents are very sad, and discouraged, not to mentioned ashamed of the actions of their son.
We can pray for this family, that they will find comfort in Christ -
Report comment to moderator
As a California prosecutor, allow me to weigh in:
It is not always necessary to establish “malicious intent” in all crimes. There are some crimes where recklessness or negligence are the only “intents” required (e.g., certain types of manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter, etc.)
Arson is one of those. There are intentional arson sections, but there is also California Penal Code §452: “A person is guilty of unlawfully causing a fire when he recklessly sets fire to or burns or causes to be burned, any structure, forest land or property.”
However, before that can be charged in this case, the People will still need to find that the boy’s actions were “reckless;” i.e., that he was indifferent to the potential consequences of his actions. That would probably depend, as others have written here, on his history, maturity, etc.
Report comment to moderator
I should clarify my last comment. The People would still need to prove that the boy intended to start the fire, so there is some willfulness involved in proving the case.
However, under §452, they would not need to prove that he actually intended to cause the damage that was eventually done . . . only that he was indifferent to that potential.
Report comment to moderator
14. Victoria
Frank I agree, I don’t think anyone has enough information.
About the last person I would expect to sound like a Radical Agnostic.
With such encouragement, we will have to extend our door-to-door conversion efforts. We will have to expand from knocking on one door every 1000 years to ringing a doorbell at least once every hundred years. Sorry about all the evangelism.
Report comment to moderator
I’m just glad the minor brushfire I set off as a junior George (but seriously serious that bundles of matches were bundles of fun at the time) was in the relatively damp dales of western PA.
But for the gracious gloom of Allegheny glens go I,
SG
Report comment to moderator
back to topJoin The Conversation
You need to be a registered user of WORLDonTheWeb.com to "join the conversation."
If you are not a member yet, what are you waiting for? Register / Login Now!