A 12-year-old boy in Texas is facing up to 40 years in prison after police charged him with capital murder — the state’s most serious felony — for shooting and killing a professional boxer twice his age.The boy, whose name has not been released because of his age, stormed into 24-year-old John Duane VanMeter’s home in Uvalde, Texas, about 80 miles from San Antonio, Wednesday evening. The underage gunman was wearing all black with a bandanna around his face, police said, and was armed with a gun. He then shot VanMeter in the head.If the boy were 18 years old, Texas law would allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty. State law also prevents children under the age of 14 from being tried as adults. Had he been tried as an adult, he’d likely face life in prison, compared to a maximum penalty of 40 years.On the night of the shooting, VanMeter was in the kitchen making candied apples while his fiancée, Sammy Arellano, and her 10-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter were in other rooms, according to the San Antonio Express-News. They heard a loud noise and decided to huddle in the bathroom. When they finally emerged, they found VanMeter dead on the living room floor.The boy knew VanMeter and his family well. Over a two-month period last year, he’d stayed at their home on and off, and at one point, Arellano’s son considered him a best friend, according to the Express-News. The boy usually lived with his grandmother and two teenage sisters, but nobody would come looking for him when he disappeared to VanMeter’s home for days on end, Norma Arellano, Sammy’s mother, told KSAT-TV.The boy was also known as a problem child; he shoplifted, threatened people with violence, and stole a PlayStation device from the couple's home, the Express-News reported. Fearing that he was having a bad influence on her son, the couple told him he was no longer welcome, Sammy said. And after the couple banned him, Norma said, he began to threaten her grandson.If convicted, the boy will be held in juvenile facilities until the age of 19, after which a judge will decide whether to transfer him into an adult facility to serve the remainder of his sentence or release him on parole.Cover image: A combination sink and toilet sit in the open in the recreation room in a section of death row at the Texas prison system's Polunsky Unit near Livingston, Texas, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2001. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)
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