Westminster – The parents of a 15-year-old boy who is under investigation for attempted homicide and arson have been trying for years to get help for their troubled son.
It wasn’t until recently – after numerous evaluations and counselling sessions – that the couple was able to find an expert who could diagnose the boy, said their neighbor Beth Carson. The Post is not identifying the family members by name, because the boy is a juvenile.
The boy’s bipolar diagnosis was an important step in trying to get appropriate treatment for the boy, Carson said. She said he is a wonderful child, who is very close to his younger brother.
“You can’t judge what he did,” she said. “He didn’t do it out meanness to his dad. He wasn’t in his right mind.”
District Attorney Don Quick said today that he has not yet decided whether to try the boy as a child or an adult. A defense attorney and a guardian ad litem were appointed for him today, Quick said.
The boy had within the last few days returned home after running away from home and seemed to be doing well, Carson said.
The father told police that he had no idea why the boy would try to kill him. But he said his stepson had said he would be better off without the stepfather, according to a police report released today.
Tuesday afternoon, the father was in the basement when he smelled a gasoline odor, the report said. He called upstairs but the boy yelled back that he didn’t smell anything.
The stepfather told police that a few minutes later he smelled a strong odor of smoke. He climbed the stairs to find the door to the kitchen locked, the police report says.
He called to his stepson and got no answer, the report says. At that point, he went back downstairs and crawled through a broken stairwell window, getting cut in the process.
Police found a plastic gasoline container, a butane lighter and a bic lighter in the home, the report says.
Authorities arrested the boy without incident at 11:22 p.m. walking about 20 blocks from his home along North Federal Boulevard. He is being held at the Adams County Juvenile Detention Center.
“He was pretty upset and in shock,” Carson said of the father. “He was crying for his son instead of being angry.”
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-820-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
