SIERRA VISTA — After hearing from three witnesses on Friday, a Superior Court judge ruled there is probable cause for a case against a 12-year-old Douglas boy accused of shooting his mother.
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During that hearing, the defense also will try to have the boy released into the custody of a family member.
“The defense has asked that he be released to his aunt up in Tucson,” Johnson said.
The juvenile has been held at the Cochise County Juvenile Detention Center in Sierra Vista since Aug. 2. He is facing charges of first-degree murder for shooting Sara Madrid, his mother, on Aug. 1.
Three people testified during Friday’s hour-long hearing, including Alfonso Munoz, Madrid’s live-in partner of 10 years.
The 12-year-old listened without any significant display of emotion as Munoz recounted the events of the night Madrid was shot.
Munoz said he and Madrid had returned to their home in the 2500 block of Oak Avenue after dropping off his biological son at a motel when the boy exited a vehicle he had been sitting in and shot Madrid multiple times.
A nervous Munoz, who is not the boy’s biological father, said that after the shooting, the boy began to cry and told Munoz, whom he calls dad, and Madrid that he was sorry.
The handgun the boy used was kept in the bedroom closet, left unloaded but stored with a loaded magazine. Munoz said he had previously shown the boy how to use it when they had once lived in an area with a high traffic of illegal immigrants.
During closing arguments, Cochise County Public Defender Sanford Edelman said that if the case goes to trial, the court needs to consider whether the boy intended to kill his mother.
“I’m not going to argue that there’s no evidence that (he) caused something bad to happen,” Edelman said. “I think the court needs to also consider, in the matter of intent, what the mind-set, what the capacity is, of a child of 12 years old to form an intention.”
The Nov. 10 hearing is scheduled to be at the Cochise County Courthouse in Bisbee.
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