Fall City, WA murder suspect to be tried as adult

Thank you, Brian. Well, a judge has decided the teenage boy accused of killing five members of his family in Falls City should be tried as an adult. Sean Chitnis is live this morning with more on why the judge made that ruling and where the case will go from here. Sean. Aaron, good morning. Well, the judge explained over the course of about 20 minutes yesterday how she came to this decision, saying in part it was the weight of the charges as well as the deliberate nature of this crime that made her come to this particular decision. We did know that there were two sides to this story that were trying to get this to move either to adult court or juvenile court, and they had the past month to try and make their case. Ultimately, though, the judge said the allegations involving multiple calculated steps that prosecutors say included retrieving a gun from a locked safe, selecting targets, and shooting each victim with precision were part of what she took note of in that decision. The judge also pointed to the prosecution's evidence. The teen attempted to conceal what he did by altering the crime scene, including changing clothes and blaming one of his siblings who was killed. Declination of a juvenile jurisdiction is warranted only under the most exceptional of circumstances. This case meets that standard due to both the extraordinary nature of the allegations and the respondent's significant mental health needs. Now, the defense argued the teen's history of significant psychological trauma and physical abuse coming from a family following a fundamentalist religion led to severe mental health struggles. The judge acknowledged this and laid out some of the extreme examples of what the teen faced in his upbringing. Evaluations revealed the defendant has a form of PTSD and will require lifelong monitoring to manage his symptoms. Part of why the judge felt this case needed to move to adult court was the juvenile justice system's requirements on keeping someone in custody, which goes up until the age of 23. She felt the adult system would be better equipped to provide treatment and ensure long-term public safety. So we could see this process transfer the defendant over to adult court and that phase of this case beginning as early as next month. The defense team, though, did mention that their client has the option to appeal this decision by the judge, and that may affect the overall timeline. Live in Seattle, Sean Janis, Fox 13 News.