10-year-old arrested in 'face kick' football incident

[100LL]

It is my understanding that if a 10 year old hits another kid on the head with a hammer and kills him it is murder. He may not be criminally liable, but it's still murder.

Why should kicking somebody in the head be a crime at one age but not at the other? It has nothing to do with being liable, the crime still happened.

But that's my understanding of the legal system, I might be completely wrong.

[HowardCoombs]

It is my understanding that if a 10 year old hits another kid on the head with a hammer and kills him it is murder. He may not be criminally liable, but it's still murder.

Why should kicking somebody in the head be a crime at one age but not at the other? It has nothing to do with being liable, the crime still happened.

But that's my understanding of the legal system, I might be completely wrong.

IANAL but I think you are wrong. I'm sure our local lawyers will chime in.
If the kid hat full intention of harm, he is liable.

[100LL]

So liable but can't be punished? Maybe I just used the wrong wording, as I sometimes do - ie. stubborn vs. stupid

[Lootoo]

Some ppl looked at the video and saw it as an accident. Some others (I'm in this camp) saw the video and saw intentional behaviour.

Had to google to find an unadulterated video...
...but after viewing it a few times, the 10 year-old kid just looked a bit tired and sloppy, not aggressive and malicious to me. In fact, it looked to me like the ball popped towards him just as he was winding up to kick it (perhaps because the kid on the ground kicked it away from himself). So I can't really go with "intentional" from that evidence.

However, the (much longer than the useless DM version) video I saw also showed how bad the whole game had been up to that point--having never witnessed a HK youth football match before I have no idea if this was the norm, but the parents seemed to be more aggressive and hyped up than the kids...

[Satay Sue]

Better keep a very close eye on the kids on Sunday then, lucky my little lion cub is still under the age of criminal responsibility....

Yikes, 10 7 year-olds - they'd probably call out the riot-police!

[penguinsix]

Leave it to the media to blow the whole incident out of proportion. What is this 'ugly race row' they are referring to?

The comments on some of the video sites (not just Youtube but some of the ones in China) have a rather strong racial component to them. BadCanto wrote about them here:

An International School’s Football Team Sparks Class and Racial War Online

[Raccon]

Had to google to find an unadulterated video...
...but after viewing it a few times, the 10 year-old kid just looked a bit tired and sloppy, not aggressive and malicious to me. In fact, it looked to me like the ball popped towards him just as he was winding up to kick it (perhaps because the kid on the ground kicked it away from himself). So I can't really go with "intentional" from that evidence.

We already had that discussion here, the conclusion was that there isn't any conclusive proof that it was intention or accident. Everything else are just opinions and speculations, and as such meaningless if you want to determine if there was a criminal component to it.

Now throw in the racial component and it can only get worst.

[jimbo]

An eye for an eye.

Let the victim kick the other kid in the head.

Problem solved.

[shenwen]

We already had that discussion here, the conclusion was that there isn't any conclusive proof that it was intention or accident. Everything else are just opinions and speculations, and as such meaningless if you want to determine if there was a criminal component to it.

Now throw in the racial component and it can only get worst.

which is one reason - and there are others - why having the kid formally arrested is ridiculous.

[Mat]

Moving - God I hate doing this, but at 10 years old some of your fellow country men are able to do this:
Two 10-year-old boys charged with raping girl, 8 | UK news | guardian.co.uk

I am like most on this issue, the video isn't that clear and we do not know much (is there a history between those 2 kids? yes, no?) so I can't really say whether it is overblow (although in my view it might be somewhat) or not and maybe someone external (police?) can close this issue once and for all.