If you didn’t think we have a problem with a decline in our culture just read this:
DEERFIELD BEACH, Fla. — A teenage squabble over a video game and a bicycle blossomed into revenge during a chance encounter and ended in the near-fatal torching of a 15-year-old Deerfield Beach boy
Some of the teens charged in the blaze laughed when investigators confronted them about the attack, the Broward Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday.
Four 15-year-old boys and one’s 13-year-old brother accosted Michael Brewer and condemned him as a snitch for calling the cops on their leader, whom the Sheriff’s Office identified as the local bully.
Brewer tried to leave. They doused him with alcohol and set him afire.
Flames burned 80 percent of his body, especially his torso and arms, and seared off much of his hair, including his eyebrows, family members said.
Matthew Bent, 15, told his accomplices to “pour it on him,” investigators said, based on their interviews with the suspects.
Brewer tore off his shirt and jumped in an apartment complex pool.
He later was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s burn center, where he is listed in critical condition with mostly second-degree burns.
“This is just an incredibly cruel thing, that anybody could have possibly done this to another human being” said Dr. Nicholas Namias, director of the University of Miami-Jackson Memorial Burn Center.
Sheriff Al Lamberti called it “a case of retaliation.”
According to Broward Sheriff’s Sgt. Steve Feeley, the feud started when Brewer borrowed $40 from Bent to buy a video game.
He never paid him back. In return Bent tried to steal a custom, $500 bike belonging to Brewer’s father Sunday night. Brewer called police, and Bent was arrested as he tried to run off with the bike.
Attempted murder over $40. And when police arrested the teens they laughed. We need to change how we’re raising our children.
Rob Taylor,
These kids are sick and evil. I hope they pay severely!
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