The 13 year old who recently killed his teacher with a crossbow in Barcelona will not be tried for the murder after a Judge ruled he was under the age of criminal responsibility.
The Judge ordered that all materials seized from the child, such as his laptop and phone, be returned at once and refused to implicate anyone else in the matter. The Judge said he was satisfied that the child acted alone in the matter and that criminal responsibility could not be attached to his family. The age of criminal responsibility is 14 in Spain.
The child in question appeared to have been fixated with crossbows, as the police seized a large number of toy and real ones from his home. Radio Barcelona said that the kid has also told his class mates of his plans, but that their warnings had fallen on deaf ears.
This means that the child has been handed over the social services, the DGAIA. They are now waiting for the results of a psychological test to determine if the child was suffering from a psychotic episode at the time of the attack. If he was, then he will be returned to his family under the care of local medical services. If he wasn’t, nobody is sure what will happen – most likely the DGAIA will open an investigation into the family to see if he was being properly looked after and if he wasn’t, put him up for adoption.