A 12-year-old girl in Tennessee has been charged with murder, accused of smothering her 8-year-old cousin as the younger girl slept. A relative said they had been arguing over an iPhone.

A security camera recorded the killing, inside the bedroom they shared on July 15 in Humboldt, Tennessee, the county prosecutor said.

The recording shows the older child using bedding to suffocate her cousin as the younger girl slept in the top bunk, Gibson District Attorney Frederick Agee’s statement said. After the child died, “the juvenile cleaned up the victim and repositioned her body,” Agee said.

A relative told WREG-TV in Memphis that the girls had been arguing over an iPhone after coming from out of town to stay with their grandmother.

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[–] 165 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Is it me or is the newsworthy thing here not the phone but the actual fucking murder?

Children have been arguing about toys for millennia. I got into a few fist fights myself over he-man dolls.

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  • [–] 44 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The fact that murder even became an option tels of a fucked up home life or psychotic personality.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago

    Psychopathy, not psychosis. It's easy to get the two disorders confused.

    From Psychology Today:

    Psychopathy is a condition characterized by the absence of empathy and the blunting of other affective states. Callousness, detachment, and a lack of empathy enable psychopaths to be highly manipulative.

    Psychosis occurs when an individual loses touch with reality—a break that can be terrifying to experience or to observe in a loved one. Psychosis can include hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech, and abnormal movements.

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  • [–] 82 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

    Why was a security camera in the bedroom? Or was it somewhere else but you could see in the bedroom? Am I the only one who finds this odd, or is this a common thing to have for 12 and/or 8 year olds?

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  • [–] 58 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    Some people are surveillance'd out. I personally find it weird when people have fuckin Alexa or Google assistant in their house. Like u really want Bezos listening to your every word so u don't have to walk 3 feet to the light switch? Different strokes I guess, but I don't want a doorbell cam n I for sure don't want cam(s) inside my fucking house especially ones connected to multinational conglomerates that are going to use it to spy on me n sell me ads.

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  • [–] 32 points 2 years ago

    "after coming from out of town to stay with their grandmother."

    I'm assuming this means this was the grandmother's house they were staying at?

    I work in hospice and and it's not uncommon for a family member to have multiple cameras set up in an elderly loved ones house for safety reasons. Maybe she wants to remain independent, but is a fall risk. We've had patients refuse in home caregivers, but allow family to put in cameras to watch for falls.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (11 children)

    They don't need to listen to your every word. They have so much information on you that they can pinpoint you pretty well. They would like to, but it's too risky. However making it easy for you to give them information willingly, yes please they are on board.

    There is no evidence they are actually always processing everything, and people have been trying to prove it for a long time now. But it seems like they do what they say they are doing: listening for wake words.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I was also surprised by that, but I'm still surprised people have them in their living rooms. I guess it's like upgrading from a baby monitor??

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I have them in my young kids’ rooms but it’s mostly just to make sure they’re in bed and not screwing around. Once they get a bit older, they’ll be removed. I don’t know how you’d justify a camera in a 12 year old’s room without very explicit needs and communication.

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  • [–] 80 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Am I the only one that thinks charging her as an adult is a little much? A 12 year old is probably still treatable. Incarceration in our criminal justice system will not accomplish that.

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  • [–] 50 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    She's about to spend a ton of time in the system either way. Whether that be juvi or somewhere else. This kid will not reemerge a rehabilitated individual. In the system you simply learn to be a better criminal, rehabilitation is myth

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago*

    I definitely agree that whatever decision the courts make, this person is not going to be properly rehabilitated via the sentence.

    I obviously have no expertise in the matter, but I really do wonder what the appropriate "consequence" would be for something like this. They're still a child, basically at 12. But they committed to doing something VERY permanent. Do they have any understanding for what it is they've done? I would think they have a semblance of it. Emotions, hormones, and everything about a pre-pubescant can run hot at those ages, but this was an egregious failure for self control.

    I'm very likely just being a fence sitter about it. Murdering someone over something petty like this would be an obvious charge for an assumed adult. Just hard to wrap my head around it when I see news like this I guess.

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    [–] 30 points 2 years ago (1 child)
  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Who was the genius at apple who came up with a remote-smothering feature?

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago
    [–] 8 points 2 years ago

    Ohhh. Because of an iPhone, not over the phone. It seemed like an odd feature; would have been impressive, though.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    12 yrs old? over an iphone?

    I get the enshitted society weight in all that, but what the actual fuck her parents raised her to?
    I'm so sad for her, and for her cousin too of course, but she's going to die a thousand times in her life trying to cope with what she has done

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