SMALL BOY SLAYS FATHER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 200, 12 November 1927, Page 10

SMALL BOY SLAYS FATHER

JUVENILE MURDER EPIDEMIC "THE MIMICRY OF CRIME” A strange epidemic of murders by! boys of between ten and twelve broke out in Germany recently. The most recent case occurred at Roitzsch, between Leipzig and Bitterfeld. A miner had just returned from his work when his 12-year-old son ap- ■ proached him stealthily from behind | and plunged a butcher's knife into his 1 back with such force that the point of the weapon came out through his chest. The wounded man died shortly utter reaching hospital. The boy ran away, but was soon caught. In the village th dead man had a very good reputation. There were dissensions in the family, but report lays the responsibility for them on the wife. This was the third case of its Kind in Germany within as many weeks. In \ the first, which occurred in the Saar i legion, the slayer was also a miner’s son and only 11 years of age. Irom a window he was the witness 1 of an altercation between his mother and an elderly workman, who ulti- ' mately struck her. The boy immediately fetched his! fathers revolver, and fired at his ■ mother’s assailant with such accuracy that the man expired very soon afterwards. « In ail probability two later murders by boys of this age were cases of the 'mimicry of crime.”