PEORIA, Ill. – There may be more questions than answers about why, prosecutors allege, a 14-year-old boy shot and killed a 17-year-old in the East Bluff last month – a shooting that allegedly occurred in front of two younger children, and one that led State’s Attorney Jodi Hoos to call the suspect “a cold-blooded adult killer.”
Peoria Police Chief Eric Echevarria tells 25 News parents may at least be partially to blame for crimes like that, and so many others that more and more juveniles are getting arrested for.
“We have adults who get into fights with minors, we have adults who are instigating fights with minors, we have adults who are frankly giving guns to minors to go shoot somebody,” Echevarria told 25 News. “Adults have to be adults, parents have to be parents.”
Echevarria has told WMBD in the past he would love to see legislation passed that would help make parents responsible for the crimes their children commit – as there’s not a legal mechanism to do that now.
Tre Thompson, an East Bluff resident and small business owner, lived a life of juvenile crime – selling drugs and committing other crimes as a child, but also losing a friend to gun violence.
Now he tries to be the mentor he says he wishes he had when he was 15, through an organization called “Boys to Men Empowerment”.
“In order to keep them off the streets, we’ve got to keep them busy,” Thompson tells 25 News. “We can’t just tell them what they should and shouldn’t be doing, but actually give them something to do to keep them away from that.”
As for the juveniles who are committing the crimes, Echevarria says they need to learn how to be better communicators instead of resorting to using deadly weapons.
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