A 16-year-old boy in New Mexico allegedly killed 4 members of his household after which drunkenly turned himself in Saturday, investigators mentioned.
The New Mexico state police mentioned in a Fb submit that the teenager was arrested in Belén, a small metropolis in Valencia county, after he known as authorities late at evening and knowledgeable them he killed his household.
When the police arrived, the boy – recognized as Diego Leyva – walked out of his house together with his fingers within the air and in an “extraordinarily intoxicated” state, in accordance with a press release from investigators. Inside the house, officers mentioned they discovered a gun on the kitchen desk and the our bodies of the deceased relations.
New Mexico state police mentioned they arrested Levya and booked him as an grownup on 4 counts of homicide. He was additionally delivered to a hospital to bear detoxing whereas investigators and crime scene technicians ready to interview him, police added.
Members of the Valencia county group expressed a way of disbelief Sunday after studying the identification of the accused killer. Certainly one of his former academics mentioned she was in disbelief that one in all her college students may have allegedly carried out such a horrendous act.
“I’d by no means have thought that one thing like this may occur and that Diego can be able to doing one thing like this” Vanessa LaGrange informed the Guardian. “Everybody’s in shock.”
The identities of the victims weren’t instantly launched on Sunday. Nonetheless, in accordance with LaGrange, one of many victims is believed to be a pupil at a center faculty the place different college students are planning to put on black and produce balloons to mourn.
In the meantime, the fireplace chief for the Valencia county hearth division, Matt Propp, mentioned: “Now we have each cause to consider that one of many victims is a volunteer firefighter.”
The killings that unfolded on Saturday have been in keeping with the kind of crime that for the reason that Eighties has been known as a “household annihilation”. Saturday’s killings have been the twenty ninth mass homicide within the US thus far this 12 months, in accordance with statistics from the non-partisan Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass homicide as one by which 4 or extra victims are killed.
There is no such thing as a centralized database for household annihilations that might present insights into that form of crime’s traits or prevalence. However the overwhelming majority of such circumstances contain a male killer armed with a gun who kills himself after murdering a number of shut relations.
Native communities sometimes deal with such circumstances as remoted tragedies, although a 2023 Indianapolis Star investigation discovered that they had occurred throughout the US – on common – as soon as each 5 days.
Yearly excessive charges of mass shootings and mass murders within the US have prompted some within the nation to name for extra substantial federal gun management. However Congress has been unable or unwilling to implement such measures.
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