Drunk 16-year-old is accused of shooting family in New Mexico

He called the police himself

Drunk 16-year-old is said to have shot the entire family


December 16, 2024 – 11:28 a.mReading time: 2 minutes

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Police at a murder scene in New Mexico (symbolic image): Officers found four bodies in the town of Belen. (Source: Adolphe Pierre-Louis/imago-images-bilder)

A very drunk teenager called the police in the middle of the night in the USA. When the officers arrived, they made a gruesome discovery.

A 16-year-old is said to have shot his parents and two brothers in the US state of New Mexico. As the police announced on Sunday, the teenager had called the officers to the family's house in the town of Belen, which has a population of 7,500, on Saturday night.

Accordingly, the phone at the sheriff's office rang around 3:30 a.m. The 16-year-old said he killed his family. When officers arrived at the scene, the boy, identified as Diego L., came out of the house with his hands raised. The police said he was very drunk and allowed himself to be arrested without resistance.

In the house, investigators found the teenager's 42-year-old father, 35-year-old mother and a 16-year-old and 14-year-old brother. All four had gunshot wounds and were dead. “There was a handgun on the kitchen table,” the officials said in a statement.

The motive for the bloody crime is currently unclear to officials. The suspect was initially taken to a hospital to sober up and was then taken into custody in a youth prison. “The investigation into this case is still in its early stages,” officials said.

Gun violence is an everyday problem in the United States, where there are more guns than people. There have been at least 484 gun attacks with four or more victims in the U.S. so far this year, according to the activist group Gun Violence Archive. Attempts to tighten lax gun laws regularly fail due to resistance from conservative Republicans and the powerful gun lobby.

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