Boys, 7 and 8, Accused of Killing Girl, 11

Two boys--ages 7 and 8--have been arrested on suspicion of murdering an 11-year-old girl, police said Monday in a case certain to inflame passions over the punishment of juvenile offenders.

The boys are accused of killing Ryan Harris, whose head was smashed with a rock and mouth was stuffed with twigs and grass. She was also sexually assaulted.

Police said the pair--the youngest murder suspects in Chicago history and among the youngest ever in the nation--killed Ryan because they wanted to steal the shiny blue Road Warrior bicycle she was riding.

They are so young that Illinois law doesn’t provide for their incarceration; no one under 10 may be kept in a locked facility. The older boy is five years shy of the minimum age at which he could be charged as an adult.

“This one, unfortunately, is blazing new trails,” said a somber Bob Benjamin, a spokesman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

But they are by no means alone in their status as accused pre-adolescent killers.

In 1996, the most recent year for which FBI statistics are available, there were three murders committed in the United States by children ages 5 to 8.

In 1997, a 13-year-old Los Angeles boy shot and killed two people--including 82-year-old Watts grandmother Viola McClain.

On Monday, an 11-year-old Martinez, Calif., boy who prosecutors said was motivated by revenge to shoot his 13-year-old neighbor to death was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

Today, opening arguments are to begin in the trial of 11-year-old Andrew Golden and 13-year-old Mitchell Johnson, accused of gunning down four classmates and a teacher at a Jonesboro, Ark., school in March.

The body of Ryan--a diminutive straight-A student who wanted to be a professional basketball player and a doctor--was discovered July 28 in a weed-choked lot in the city’s South Side neighborhood of Englewood. Ryan, who lived in another Chicago neighborhood with her mother, grandparents and five siblings, had been staying with her godmother so that she could attend a nearby summer camp.

In the days after the killing, police questioned dozens of neighborhood children in an attempt to retrace Ryan’s movements after she pedaled away from her godmother’s house on the borrowed bicycle. The boys now in custody--quiet, courteous kids too young to count out the proper change when buying goodies at a local grocery store, according to the store’s owner--were considered possible witnesses.

They told police they had seen a stranger lure Ryan into his car, and take the bike as well, Chicago Police Sgt. Stan Zaborac said. But in subsequent interviews, officials said, their stories began to change.

On Sunday, the boys’ parents brought them to the local police station for further questioning. “In their statements, there were elements of this case that would only be known by the detectives who investigated it and the perpetrators,” Zaborac said.

By Monday morning, police had called off the search for other suspects, saying they had confessions and physical evidence tying the boys to the crime. The younger boy made three separate statements implicating himself, police said.

Appearing at a hearing in juvenile court Monday, the suspects drew pictures at the defense table, ate Skittles and cried.

The boys told police that they had started throwing rocks at the girl, and one thrown by the younger boy hit her in the back of her head, causing her to fall off her bike and hit her head on the ground, Det. Allen Nathaniel testified.

The younger boy told police they dragged Ryan about 20 feet to a wooded area and “began to play with her very softly,” Nathaniel said. Police said the girl, who died from blunt trauma to the head and asphyxiation, likely was unconscious when she was dragged. Nathaniel said at least one of the boys pulled her panties off.

A judge ruled there was sufficient evidence to hold the pair. He would not disclose where they were being held.

But Andre Grant, an attorney for one of the boys, denied the murder allegations, saying: “They do not have the physical power or ability to do what was done. They could not have dragged this girl into the secluded area.”

Shirley Blanton, who has lived next door to the older boy’s parents since before he was born, said the two friends were “lovable kids. They would help people work in their yard. They’d help fix bicycles, paint bicycles. They were just normal kids.”

“They didn’t do this,” Blanton said above the din of the coin-operated laundry she manages just blocks from where Ryan’s body was found. “I know they didn’t.”

The spate of high-profile, violent crimes committed by children has prompted 41 states in the past six years--including California--to rewrite their juvenile crime statutes to more easily charge young criminals as adults.

Even as a judge was ordering that the boys be held in a “safe and secure” environment pending psychological evaluations Monday, Melissa Sickmund of the National Center for Juvenile Justice in Pittsburgh cautioned against rewriting more laws based on cases like this one.

“Homicide is rare, despite what you see on television, and homicide by children is especially rare,” she said. “Say you try them as adults. They are 7 and 8. What are you going to do with them then?”

Although most American cities have had their share of shocking crimes at the hands of kids, Chicago’s recent history is a particularly grim one.

In the fall of 1994, 11-year-old murder suspect Robert “Yummy” Sandifer was shot in the head, executed by his own gang brothers because they feared he might surrender to police. A few days later, another 11-year-old was charged with bludgeoning to death an elderly neighbor.

That was followed by a murder that continues to haunt the city. Two boys, just 8 and 10, dangled 5-year-old Eric Morris from a 14th-floor window of a South Side tenement building after the preschooler refused to steal candy for them. They pulled him back inside, then held him out the window again, and let go. Eric fell to his death.

In March of this year, a 9-year-old boy from the South Side and his 14-year-old brother were charged with beating their 5-year-old foster brother to death in a case of sibling rivalry.

Ryan’s slaying took place in similarly childlike circumstances, police said, when two grade-schoolers began to covet a bicycle.

Police said the girl and the 8-year-old boy, who may have known each other, were together when the boy’s 7-year-old friend showed up. The younger boy, according to authorities, initiated the incident, picking up a stone and either throwing it or slamming it into the side of Ryan’s head.

The blow fractured her skull.

Times researcher John Beckham contributed to this story.