An 11-year-old Pennsylvania boy allegedly shot his father to death after previously having his Nintendo Switch handheld gaming system taken away.
The boy is facing criminal homicide charges after a 13 January shooting at his family’s home in Duncannon Borough.
As put in court documents obtained and reported by WGAL News 8, the case illustrates how easily children can access guns in the US, where firearms are ubiquitous.
The victim was reportedly discovered in the bedroom he shared with his wife, which court documents say is connected to their son’s bedroom by a closet.
Police reported it was the child’s birthday, and he had entered the bedroom shouting: “Daddy’s dead.” Troopers at the scene also reportedly said that they heard the son tell his mother: “I killed Daddy.”
Police said the shooting occurred after the couple had gone to bed shortly past midnight. The child reportedly told authorities that he had had a good day with his parents, but the documents reportedly state that he became “mad” when his father told him it was time to go to bed.
According to the news outlet, the court document says that the boy told police he found a key to the gun safe in his father’s drawer in his parent’s bedroom. He reportedly unlocked it while attempting to locate his Nintendo Switch – which had previously been taken away from him – and found a gun.
11 year old boy who barely understands the consequences of his actions obviously has access to weapons and then shoots his dad…
This is extremely tragic but this obviously being the US, you can bet your ass that this little boy’s life hasn’t been ruined enough.
The government will jump on this, jail his ass as an adult because I don’t know why they have laws for kids of they try all kids like adults anyways, and they’ll make sure he’ll be fucked for life.
The US is a shit hole third world banana republic
Daddy had it coming. Don’t touch that boys switch.
The son then allegedly admitted to “removing the gun from the safe, loading bullets into it and walking over to his father’s side of the bed”, according to the affidavit. “He pulled back the hammer and fired the gun at his father,” the affidavit adds.
When asked what he believed would happen when he fired the gun, the boy responded that he was “mad” and that he had “not thought about that”, according to investigators.
Jesus man. This is a horrific situation. That poor woman lost her husband and, effectively, her son in one night.
The fact that the kid could easily get into the safe makes it no such thing.
It is still very saddening imo
Maybe something good can come out of it. The kid has serious issues which hopefully he gets intense therapy for, rather than not killing his dad and growing up being some psycho killer that terrorizes the general public.
hopefully he gets intense therapy for
Oh he’s going to be in the US prison system now. He will get next to zero mental health care provided.
At his age, that is not necessarily the case.
He’s likely going to have mental health issues now, as a result of the shooting.
As for pre-existing mental health issues; to me the most likely condition seems to be “was 11”, which most people grow out of. As a thought experiment, how many 11 year olds are there that you would be comfortable having a gun unsupervised.
He’s likely going to have mental health issues now
Now?
The number of people in this comments who think that looking for the key to a gun safe, getting a gun out of it, loading it, and using it to murder someone is normal 11 year old behavior is insane. Kid has some serious issues to be capable of something like this
He is autistic.
Okay? Don’t see how that explains this.
At 11 my dad had guns in the house, but not in a million years would my anger have made me think yo load his gun shoot him. (Plus ammo was hidden and locks separate from his guns)
That kid has serious unchecked emotional dysregulation in my opinion.
I think in rural Canada you can handle guns at 12 legally.
He is autistic. It’s in the article.
And?
The kid killed one of the only people that might have provided that care, and probably left the other in poverty.
The odds ain’t good.
This must be the fault of violent video games
Not guns
Nope
Inb4 Trump bans the Nintendo Switch thinking it’s a Glock switch
Ah yes, good idea to get rid of all guns. I’m sure Trump’s ICE and SS will find their jobs a lot easier.
Predator Drone INTENSIFIES
What is wrong with responsible gun ownership? We have licenses and registries for vehicles why not for firearms? Nobody said get ride of all firearms, that was on you.
But don’t worry bro all this tragedies are worth it because all the guns will protect America for tyranny… Wait, hold up…
Talent like that can’t go to waste. He’ll be put in ICE’s young achievers club where youth will be free to learn and grow at an advanced rate free from normal societies mores. He will practice high-performance psychopathy, bleeding edge unwarranted agression and advanced immunity from prosecution.
This boy has a bright future, as does America.
Sounds a bit like the minting of a new Space Marine
ICE’s young achievers club
“Rockwell Jugend”
So bright, it’s almost all white
Charlie Kirk approved of that
Yeah, my kid is way too unpredictable, there’s is absolutely no way that I could ever have a firearm in my home or else this will be me or my wife, 100% certainty. We regularly get punched, kicked, bitten, etc almost daily. When he’s angry (which is often) he just can’t think, and then he regrets his actions later, but he does some dumb shit when he’s angry…
My daughter has “reactive attachment disorder” and she can behave like this. She is adopted from a rough first few years of life and being in the foster system for a while before we took her and her older brother in.
Like you said below, as she gets older she is getting better at controlling impulses, but not 100% and so when she does get upset she is stronger and more dangerous. 2024-2025 school year was super rough for us. She went to the ER many times, as it was the only support we could utilize for the kind of violence she was exhibiting, and eventually we were able to get her into a child psych unit for a few weeks and then into residential treatment. It was tough; we had to push back on very judgemental hospital staff, drive am hour one-way for weeks to visit her in residential, call the governor’s ombudsmen, and just generally do a ton of work to get her the help she needed.
At one point, the psych unit’s family coordinator, who’s job was basically to convince us to bring her back home after a week of them basically only sedating her asked if we were ready to bring her back home. And when we told her that we weren’t because we expected her to rapidly move back to violent behaviors, she insisted we were going to have to, so I asked “and what if we don’t?” She threatened to call DHS. So I leaned into the camera and said “great, let’s do that then”. I believe this to be the only reason we got a successful referral to residential treatment.
All of this was necessary treatment for my daughter. She is doing much better now. She has an IEP, which has placed her in an “emotional support classroom” and is on some good meds that are definitely helping. That said, she is still exhibiting violent behaviors from time to time. The trend is moving in the right direction, but she still has rough days.
So anyway, I encourage you to seek help with this. It can be VERY HARD. You may be forced to make tough decisions and push back against people who are very judgemental and even making scary threats about you being an abusive or neglectful parent. They do not know your child. They do not know you. They do not know your home life. You must do what is right to being peace and safety to your home, even with these challenges. Good luck. Please feel free to reach out with questions or a non-judgemental ear to bounce off of.
Wow, thank you for sharing all of that. I know you’ve been through a lot, as it turns out adoption is not an easy road. Yeah I’d say we’re in the same boat here a lot of ways, we also adopted. He was 6 when he moved in with us, and he came with a lot of baggage. He apparently moved around the system a lot before he got to us, had a lot of different homes, and some of those were not good for him either.
So yeah, he definitely still has some problematic behaviors, he has not figured out how to be respectful to the people around him. But he’s beginning to be able to actually talk about his emotions, at least a bit. And the violence is way down from where it was a couple years ago. And OH MY GOD it was amazing when we found a medication that actually helped him! I have a new appreciation for SSRIs (they never did much for our first kid, so I had my doubts). But when we started him on that, I honestly I feel like that week was the start of a new era, like all of a sudden he was actually able to hear what people around him were saying, rather than just hearing his own anxieties reflected back. (The next goal is to get him to care about what other people are saying *sigh*) But yeah, that was still a turning point, it felt like he started learning how to interact with people for the first time that week.
Anyway, I don’t really like to get into all of this on the web, you really don’t know how long things can live online and I don’t want any of this to come back and embarrass him or anything. But yeah, thanks for reaching out I appreciate it more than I can express. And of course feel free to DM me any time if you want a non-judgmental ear too, I know how difficult and thankless this role can be.
Out of curiosity though, what state are you in? I know the state agencies that handle adoption can vary a lot from state to state and sometimes the services on offer to help out can be lacking. I think we are probably lucky to live in MA, I think the services available here are pretty good, even if DCF (dept of children and families) is currently a mess with budgets being slashed.
Sorry I forgot to respond on this! I’m in Oregon. It may be a progressive state on the map and when you think of the general vibe of Portland, but our government is pretty behind in basically any category you can think of. The mental healthcare supports for children in this state is… poor.
Have you considered having him visit a therapist?
He may have unresolved emotions that would benefit him (and people around him) to come out.
Child therapists pretty much “play” with them so it’s something kids don’t get annoyed/bored (or even give them a lot of thoughts)
We have a whole lot of professionals involved. He certainly has unresolved emotions, as well as emotional delay and two other diagnoses. Don’t worry, we’re on it, there’s just a lot of work to do.
❤️ Glad to hear that and all the best with your work!
How old are they?
9 now. As he gets older the situation is getting better. But then again, he punches harder too.
If just the father had his own gun to him, he could have had defended himself.
We need more guns to be able to defend ourselves against children with guns. Write your Congressman today.
Its always a tragedy. It feels simultaneously avoidable and inevitable. Its always a tragedy.
Douglas and Jillian adopted Clayton in 2018, according to court documents. Stuckey told News 8 that he only met the 11-year-old at one point in-person when he was much younger, as he left the country for nearly a decade and does not travel back often.
Stuckey is in a graduate MBA program, and received a undergraduate degree in Psychology Clinical mental health from Southern New Hampshire University, and tells News 8 that Clayton has autism, which escalated in 2025.
Stuckey says, at Doug and Jill’s request, he drafted a letter to the Susquenita School District asking to move Clayton to a behavioral education center, citing rising concerns about his behavior with fellow classmates.
“In the letter, I was speaking to the tune of the school violence that we’re seeing and that some of these subtle behaviors could eventually lead to a situation,” Stuckey said.
White 40something American with a goatee and a shaved head who keeps a gun next to his bed and is raising a violent kid?
Will withhold judgment on whether this is any big loss.
You don’t fuck with Animal Crossing.
That’s a reasonable reaction for an American. Isn’t that how things work there?
Is America great again yet?
It better have at least been a 2.
