A joy ride in a stolen car ends as kids kill a bicyclist. Should they face murder charges?

USA Today

21-03-2025

A joy ride in a stolen car ends as kids kill a bicyclist. Should they face murder charges? Boys, 11 and 13, are being charged with murder after a hit-and-run in New Mexico. How young is too young to be charged with murder? Depends what state you're in.
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Video shows moments before New Mexico cyclist was fatally hit
Police say three boys, including an 11-year-old, were accused in connection with the fatal hit-and-run of 63-year-old bicyclist, Scott Habermehl.
Police say a video on Instagram shows three boys in a stolen car purposely hitting a cyclist.
Two boys, ages 11 and 13 at the time of the incident, are being charged with murder.
Twenty-six states have established a minimum age for prosecution. New Mexico is not one of them.
After an avid cyclist was killed in a hit-and-run during his morning commute last year, police in New Mexico were at a loss for who could've committed the crime.
Months later, an anonymous tip would lead investigators to Instagram, where a video was circulating that appears to show Scott Dwight Habermehl, 63, being mowed down by a car with three young boys inside. The video captured a disturbing conversation with a 13-year-old driver and now 16-year-old boy discussing hitting Habermehl, police said. An 11-year-old boy in the passenger seat waved a handgun and laughed as his side of the vehicle struck the cyclist.
Habermehl was on his way to work at the Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque at around 4:40 a.m. on May 29, 2024, according to police. He was in a dedicated bike lane.
The 13-year-old was charged with murder. Prosecutors say the 11-year-old and 16-year-old will be, too. Police initially said the 11-year-old was too young to face murder charges, but the Bernalillo County District Attorney's Office later clarified that was not the case. USA TODAY is not identifying the children because officials have not said if they will be tried as adults.
The arrests come after an uptick in homicides committed by children driven in part by social media, loss of supports during the pandemic and an uptick in the availability of guns. The shocking, deadly joy ride in a stolen car in New Mexico has once again raised questions about how to hold children responsible for violent crimes.
How young is too young to be charged with murder?
Twenty-six states have established a minimum age for prosecution, according to the National Juvenile Justice Network. They range from age 7 in Florida to age 13 in Maryland, though some states also make exceptions for certain types of violent crimes.
In New Mexico, anyone under 18 can technically be prosecuted for any crime, according to Roberta Yurcic, an attorney in Albuquerque who has represented juvenile offenders. From January 2023 to July 2024, there were 20 cases of murder charges against juveniles in Bernalillo County, which includes Albuquerque, according to District Attorney Sam Bregman.
In order to secure a first-degree murder conviction, prosecutors typically must prove the defendant intended to kill the victim, Yurcic said. A defense attorney could argue that a child does not have the mental capacity to form such intent, she explained.
Even if they aren't tried as adults, children can be sentenced as adults in New Mexico if a judge determines they won't be susceptible to treatment in available juvenile facilities. The judge must weigh a child's ability to be rehabilitated against any public safety risk. New Mexico has banned the sentencing of children to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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When young people commit violent acts, prosecutors across the country are increasingly widening the scope of accountability to include educators, parents and others who fail to report concerning behavior, sometimes in addition to or in lieu of charging the children themselves.
For example, in Virginia, an assistant principal and a mother faced charges after a 6-year-old shot his first grade teacher in 2023. Parents have also faced prison time and criminal charges after school shootings in Michigan and Georgia.
It's not clear if police in New Mexico will expand the scope of their investigation.
Killings committed by kids on the rise
Though murder and violent crime in the United States has decreased in recent years, homicides committed by children have risen dramatically, jumping 65% from 315 in 2016 to 521 in 2022, according to a report in September from the Council on Criminal Justice.
While alarming, the uptick is nowhere near the peak reached in the 1990s, when thousands of children 17 and younger were charged with murder, according to the Department of Justice. Those numbers fell sharply around the turn of the century, and by 2020, just 930 young people were arrested in murder cases, that report found.
Experts previously told USA TODAY the COVID-19 pandemic helped create the conditions for the recent increase. Americans bought tens of millions of guns, which may be easier for kids to access than parents realize, while children temporarily lost access to key social supports in their communities like violence prevention programs and spent more time online, where experts warn threats and taunts can escalate into deadly conflict.
Still, experts emphasized that screen time – or other individual factors – can't be entirely to blame.
'The important issue here is any one of these things in isolation doesn't have the impact,' David Muhammad, executive director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, told USA TODAY. 'But the combination of this horrible perfect storm of challenges all culminated to produce this overall increase in gun violence.'
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Deadly attacks by young people have been captured on video and shared on social media before. In September, four Las Vegas teenagers plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter for beating their classmate to death in a violent assault that was recorded and posted online.
Muhammad said disputes between kids sometimes originate online, where children and adults alike can make threats and talk about weapons. Research has found there are many reasons why kids post photos of guns, including among gang-affiliated young people, but this online activity can sometimes fuel real-world violence.
Yurcic told USA TODAY the main factors that put kids at risk of committing violent crimes include poverty, mental health issues, and being exposed to the criminal justice system or addiction at home. But she said social media has also been a huge factor in the majority of her juvenile cases, and she believes it can lead kids to behave in more extreme ways than they otherwise would.
"I really do think that that influences kids' behavior in real life, you know the things that they see on social media, the potential of being able to post something on social media that would gain credibility with their peers," she said.
Contributing: Saleen Martin, Kayla Jimenez, Phaedra Trethan and Thao Nguyen, USA TODAY