Young Children Arrested in Connection with Serious Crimes Surprising Judges

SAN ANTONIO – What appears to be a trend of especially young children being arrested in connection with serious crimes is surprising, even to one local judge who regularly deals with young offenders.

“It’s eye-opening,” said Judge William “Cruz” Shaw, who presides over Bexar County’s 436th Juvenile District Court. “It’s eye-opening, seeing what our youth are doing right now.”

Specifically, Shaw is referring to a wide range of crimes, including everything from aggravated assaults to carjackings to school shooting threats.

An actual shooting by a 14-year-old at a school in Georgia earlier this month seemed to open the gates to numerous school shooting threats across the county, including some in San Antonio.

Two 12-year-old boys were arrested in early September in connection with two separate threats made online.

Police in Kerrville arrested a 10-year-old for the same crime on Monday.

Shaw oversaw a hearing for one of the 12-year-old threat suspects, as well as one recently for a 14-year-old boy accused of committing a carjacking.

The victim in the carjacking case told KSAT 12 News the teen pointed a gun at him and even fired off a shot during a struggle for his car keys.

In April, another young suspect, a 13-year-old boy, was arrested in connection with a deadly carjacking.

He was accused of shooting and killing a man whose car he tried to steal from a Walmart parking lot near Blanco Road and Wurzbach Parkway.

Shaw said a lot of these children are influenced by what they are exposed to, both in their environments and through social media.

“The world is at our children’s fingertips, so they can see things from all over this country, all over the world, and not always the best,” Shaw said.

However, social media, for a sheriff in central Florida, has become a part of the solution.

Sheriff Mike Chitwood of Volusia County, Florida, recently made national news after he posted pictures of young suspects —one of them 11-years-old—who had been arrested on charges related to making school shooting threats.

Chitwood’s posts have garnered a large number of comments from people, both in support of, and opposed to, his idea.

Shaw said the sheriff’s way of trying to combat youth crime would never work in Texas.

“I don’t know how they do it in Florida, but in Texas, juveniles, we have a really strict confidentiality process,” he said. “None of these kids should be on TV or in newspapers.”

Instead of broadcasting their information, Shaw recommends a narrow focus on them — watching children and their actions closely.

“We just have to be vigilant and aware, and when we see something, report it,” he said. “Hopefully, we can resolve those issues before anything happens.”