ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Behind the wheel of the stolen car was a 12-year-old boy. In the front passenger seat was a boy who just days earlier marked his 11th birthday. He was waving a handgun as a 15-year-old boy in the backseat recorded video of what police described as a deliberate hit-and-run.
A voice believed to be the 15-year-old's says, "Just bump him, brah." The driver asks, "Like bump him?" The rear passenger responds, "Yeah, just bump him. Go like … 15 … 20."
The car smashed into a bicyclist on his way to work. The windshield shattered and the car sped away in the predawn hours that May morning.
Months passed with no arrests. Then in February a video of the deadly crash surfaced on social media. Remarkably it led police back to an 11-year-old who last June was arrested and placed in custody for a series of break-ins and burglaries in northeast Albuquerque. Police also accused the boy of shooting and wounding another teen, which prompted an investigation that turned up firearms and a bullet-proof vest that had been stolen from a police vehicle.
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A memorial ghost bike is seen March 20 near the spot where a driver struck and killed Scott Dwight Habermehl in May 2024 in Albuquerque, N.M.
But the allegations of running down and killing a person were on another level, one seldom dealt with in New Mexico's juvenile justice system.
The 11-year-old and the other boys in the car, now ages 13 and 16, were arrested last week in connection with the death of Scott Dwight Habermehl, a father of two and a successful engineer.
Prosecutors said Friday that all three boys will face the same charges: counts of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, leaving the scene of an accident involving great bodily harm or death and unlawful possession of a handgun by a person under 19. Prosecutors are seeking to have the oldest boy charged as an adult.
The spike in juvenile violence — particularly this case — shook the community, further frustrated law enforcement and added to the pressure on policymakers to reconsider the limitations of a juvenile justice system that wasn't designed to deal with children as young as 11.
Authorities suggested there is a perception among juveniles that they won't face consequences for violent crimes.
The Albuquerque Police Department headquarters is seen Feb. 2, 2024, in Albuquerque, N.M.
How are young defendants handled?
Albuquerque police arrested numerous teens, most being 15 or older, in homicide cases over the last year. Legal experts and authorities can't recall a case in which someone as young as 11 faced a murder charge.
Under state law, the 11-year-old cannot be held in a juvenile detention center but will remain in the custody of the state child welfare agency. The other two boys were ordered to remain in a juvenile detention center as their cases proceed, with children's court judges finding they were a danger to themselves and the community.
Santa Fe-based attorney John Day said New Mexico's juvenile justice system was meant to intervene and get help for children so they wouldn't commit crimes as adults. It was designed with the assumption that kids this young weren't competent to engage in this kind of violent behavior, he said.
"Obviously when you have 11-year-olds who are being accused of participating in running over bicyclists and brandishing guns, that's something that when they were drafting these laws was really not taken into consideration because it was a different time. It was a different era," Day said.
New Mexico is among the many states without a minimum age and state law allows for teenagers as young as 14 in some instances to be tried in adult court only for first-degree murder.
Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman says the children's code is antiquated, but efforts failed to get the Democratic-controlled Legislature to expand the types of violent crimes juveniles could be charged in as adults.
"The single most effective step to reduce violent crime in our community is modernizing our juvenile justice system with meaningful consequences alongside behavioral health support," Bregman said recently.
Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham reiterated her disappointment Saturday that lawmakers failed to pass legislation to address juvenile justice and what she described as a crime crisis. She also pointed to a deadly shooting at a park in Las Cruces on Friday night, saying lawmakers should expect to be called back for a special session.
A memorial ghost bike is seen March 20 near the spot where a driver struck and killed Scott Dwight Habermehl in May 2024 in Albuquerque, N.M.
How has juvenile justice changed in the US?
Before the creation of juvenile courts more than a century ago, children who were older than 7 were processed and incarcerated under common law just as adults would be. Younger children were considered incapable of possessing criminal intent.
Along with that history, the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention notes on its website that the juvenile court system also was established to provide positive social development for children who lack support at home.
It's not clear what home life was like for the 11-year-old accused in the New Mexico case. The New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department declined to comment. The Albuquerque school district confirmed he was not enrolled in school.
Juvenile justice advocates say cases in which young children are accused of murder are rare but not unheard of. In 2008, Arizona prosecutors handled the case of an 8-year-old boy who shot and killed his father and his father's friend. He pleaded guilty to negligent homicide in the death of the friend. Prosecutors dropped the charge for killing his father, saying it was best for the boy not to have to acknowledge killing his father.
Some advocates have pushed for setting the minimum age for prosecution at least 14, citing research suggesting children who enter the juvenile justice system earlier in their lives have more adverse outcomes than older teens.
"That type of harm caused at such a young age has a serious impact on the rest of their life," said Riya Saha Shah, the CEO of the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center.
ATF urges police to stop reselling used guns
ATF urges police to stop reselling used guns
Federal officials are cautioning state and local law enforcement against reselling their used guns to the public, saying the practice has sent tens of thousands of old police weapons into the hands of criminals.
The warning was the first in a series of recommendations made by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in its of a multiyear gun trafficking assessment requested by President Joe Biden in 2021.Â
The latest report, released on January 8, comes after by , CBS News, and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting found that more than 52,000 former police guns had resurfaced at crime scenes over the past two decades—a pipeline fueled in part by the widespread practice of selling used guns back to firearms dealers for discounts on new equipment.Â
Some of these resold weapons were tied to drug arrests, domestic violence incidents, and shootings, including the killing of an Indianapolis teenager. The investigation prompted the Minneapolis and Indianapolis police departments to stop reselling guns.
In its report, the ATF warned about the potential dangers of reintroducing used police guns to the marketplace and urged law enforcement agencies to consider the possible consequences before deciding to resell.Â
"The data show that some of the firearms put back into the public market are used to commit additional crimes," ATF spokesperson Kristina Mastropasqua said. "This is not the leading source of crime guns, but it is one source. The goal of the report is that state and local policymakers will be able to use the best data available to make future decisions."
More than 25,000 firearms used in crimes between 2019 and 2023 previously belonged to police, according to the report. That includes not only resold service weapons but also guns that were seized as evidence or stolen from officers. Roughly 4% of those guns—more than 1,000—turned up in homicides. Another 9%, roughly 2,200 guns, were confiscated from convicted felons. The numbers are likely an undercount: The figures depend on law enforcement agencies tracing guns that they recover at crime scenes. Only around 55% actually do, the report says.Â
A 2021 investigation from The Trace highlighted the extent of this problem in California, showing that in the preceding decade, police departments in the state had more than 90,000 crime guns for tracing. According to the ATF report, California was the leading source of former police guns later used in crimes.
While former police guns represented just a fraction of the nation's crime guns—a little over 1% of all guns traced—they were significantly more likely to be discovered with young people and slightly more likely to wind up in violent crimes, the report shows.Â
Each of the agency's four trafficking reports has concentrated on a different facet of the nation's gun violence crisis. The first installment traced how the United States has become awash in guns. The second shared troves of crime gun recovery data previously hidden from public view, and the third detailed the results of more than 10,000 firearms trafficking investigations from 2017 to 2021. The latest report updates the agency's previous analyses and sheds new light on trafficking over the border into Mexico. Some of its other key findings:
- At least 36% of all guns traced by Mexican authorities between 2022 and 2023 were originally purchased in the United States. More than two-thirds of those guns—almost 14,000—were bought in the four Southwest border states: California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.Â
- Police recovered more than 27,000 homemade, untraceable ghost guns in 2023—the highest number on record. But the year-over-year increase in recoveries (up less than 1% from 2022) is by far the smallest on record, suggesting that new federal regulations on the kits used to build ghost guns may be having an effect.Â
- Gun dealers lost or otherwise got rid of more than 72,000 guns without a record of their sale or disposal between 2016 and 2023. That is more guns than were reported stolen from gun dealers during the same period.Â
To reduce gun trafficking, the ATF also recommended enhancing the background check system for gun sales and expanding the use of digital tools for tracing shell casings and guns recovered at crime scenes.
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