The Associated Press

MOUNT MORRIS TOWNSHIP, Mich.

Wednesday, March 01, 2000

MOUNT MORRIS TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) – The 6-year-old boy who fatally shot a fellow first-grader lived in a ”flophouse” and used a stolen handgun he found in a bedroom there, the prosecutor said today.

Genesee County Prosecutor Arthur Busch said the home was frequented by strangers.

”This boy comes from a very troubled home,” Busch said on NBC’s ”Today” show. ”He is really a victim of a drug culture and a house that’s really in chaos.”

Investigators searched the home Tuesday. ”There certainly was drugs in the home,” Busch told ABC’s ”Good Morning America.”

Kayla Rolland, also 6, died a half-hour after she was shot in the neck at Buell Elementary School on Tuesday morning. Busch said there may have been ”some sort of scuffle or quarrel on the playground” between the two a day earlier in which one child slapped the other.

The boy pulled the .32-caliber handgun from his pants, aimed it at another classmate and then turned it on the little girl, Busch said.

”His actions were naughty, in his mindset,” he said. ”What he understood he did is another matter. …

”He is a victim in many ways,” Busch said. ”It is very sad, we need to put our arms around him and love him.”

The boy, whose name was not released, was questioned and released. Busch said the boy was staying with a relative and police said he would be put in state custody.

The boy lived with his mother, a man described as an uncle and a younger sibling, Busch said. The boy’s father is in the county jail, but Busch said he didn’t know what he was charged with.

”There were people coming and going from this house,” he said. When police went to the house ”there were several people just hanging out. I call it a flophouse.”

State law allows for adult prosecution of young offenders, but the prosecutor said he thinks charges are unlikely in this case.

”You have to be old enough to form criminal intent to commit the crime of murder,” Busch said Tuesday night. ”The common law of our country says that a child under the age of 7 is not criminally responsible – cannot be convicted of a felony.”

However, Busch said someone could face charges for enabling the boy to get the gun, which officials said had been reported stolen in December. Investigators also found a stolen 12-gauge shotgun and other evidence in the home, the prosecutor said.

”We continue to try to find the person who made it possible to get that gun to begin with,” Busch said.

Classes were canceled at the school today.

At the time of the shooting, most of the 22 students in the classroom had filed into a hallway to head to the library and just five students remained inside. Busch said the teacher was standing in the doorway when the boy fired the only bullet in the gun.

A girl who identified herself as a classmate, 6-year-old Haili Durbin, told The Associated Press that Kayla had yelled at the boy because he spit on her desk and stood on it. Haili was interviewed with her father present.

Asked about the girl’s account, Busch said: ”I wouldn’t take that too seriously at this point. That’s not what we’ve learned from talking to several witnesses.”

Busch said the school had no metal detectors but had ”non-police private security” workers who monitored its hallways and its 500 children. Laws already are on the books in Michigan and across the country to keep guns and other weapons off school grounds.

”I don’t think many districts in the country have focused on security in elementary schools,” Busch said.

The boy is the youngest suspect in the deadly school shootings that have rocked communities around the country over the past three years. In 1998, two boys, 11 and 13, opened fire at a middle school in Jonesboro, Ark., killing five.

”Where does it stop? First-graders shooting first-graders. The culture of violence is manifesting itself here with what occurred,” said Sam Riddle, a spokesman for the family of Isaiah Shoels, who was among 12 students killed by teen-age gunmen at Columbine High School in Colorado last year. Riddle grew up in Flint, 60 miles northwest of Detroit.

The tragedy of young killers was highlighted last fall in the Detroit suburb of Pontiac, where a boy who gunned down a stranger at age 11 was convicted as an adult of murder. Nathaniel Abraham, one of the youngest murderers in U.S. history, was sentenced in January to a juvenile detention center until he turns 21, after which he will be a free man.

He was the first to be charged with murder under a 1997 Michigan law that allows children of any age to be prosecuted as adults for serious crimes.

Busch said the difference in ages between Abraham and the Buell Elementary shooter is significant.

”Nate Abraham was 11 years old; this boy is only 6,” he said. ”If you’re under a certain age, you can’t form the mental intentions to appreciate the consequences of your actions sufficiently enough to be criminally responsible.

”There’s not much I can do to him, other than make sure he’s safe and in an environment where he’s not inclined to do such hazardous behavior.”

Chris De Witt, a spokesman for Michigan Attorney General Jennifer Granholm, said the boy technically could be tried as an adult under state law if a judge finds he fits ”a number of tests.” But he added, ”It’s very doubtful that a 6-year-old would meet that test.”

On a campaign fund-raiser in Florida, President Clinton expressed sorrow at the shooting and said ”we just don’t have any excuses” for failing to require child safety locks on guns and background checks on gun show purchases.