They should have cut his pocket money too, then he couldn't afford a hitman.

How can he be up on an attempted murder charge if there was no actual attempt on the parents life. Surely 'Conspiracy to commit murder' would be a better charge, or does such a charge not exist in the US system.

Genuinely confused :)

His surname wasn't Bush by any chance was it?

putting this kid in juvy is the perfect way to fix all his problems while punishing him. He obviously has real problems, and it says a lot to me about his parents that they didn't support him through this (no sarcasm about that thanks). He obviously needs psychiatric help, and maybe a bit of love, not what appears to be more authority (which would seem to be what he has a real issue with) and rejection from the people he is so angry at in the first place.

"Sit down and play computer games."

This kid sounds seriously messed up. A contract killer because you're not allowed to play your console?

I'll bet he liked to play Hitman. Well now he can go and play sim-jail.

...makes you violent. Official.

Suck on that, Jack Thompson.

After checking on Google Maps, Maryland is in the east of the US somewhere.

Tony Smith - please dont assume your 'audience' knows where Maryland is! It could quite easily have been Australia for all we know - sounds a bit aussie.

Good god. has the Reg gone totally yankee now??

Mind you thats the correct neck of the woods for that sort of mentality.

"Unfortunately, the alleged hitman was an undercover cop"

Surely you meant to say Fortunately? Or were you in on the plot to off this lads poor parental units?

Good job he's not a Brit, he'd probably get more time with a playstation in one of our detention ctr's

Call me silly but wouldn't it have been better to get the kid some kind of councelling instead of launching a sting operation or am I just out of touch with the modern world?

Nik: There are a combinations of punishments from his parents given as possible motivations for this guys behaviour: being grounded, no tv and no games console being just one. What gets the headline? - deprivation of his PlayStation. Its just pathetic how the media in general leaps upon the videogames industry as the root cause of all evil, and this sort of headline doesn't help things - its just sloppy sensationalist reporting.

Surely this method of operating is entrapment, which last I checked, is against the law. It's the same as Drug Entrapment. Officer poses as a dealer, sells someone drugs and BAM. Arrested. Ah well...You know what they say. If it passes trial once and then is sited in another case, it becomes a standard.

The youth solicited the action, the police simply provided a means for him to hang himself. Entrapment means the police themselves suggested the idea, and the youth only responded to that suggestion, but would not have, or did not, solicit the action, even if he agreed with it.

Yes I agree with the others that the boy needs help, but then again, he needs to be kept off the street, as he is a danger to more than his parents. He is a danger to all society if being grounded causes him to enter into a murderous rage where he is willing to kill his own parents.

It is a sad reflection on the deep social problems in the USA caused by that countries obsession with "individual liberty" and "unassailable rights". Sadly the USA has made a "Right" out of many things they should see as a "privilege".

IT angle or no IT angle?

I guess you're just damned if you do and damned if you don't El Reg.

BTW, where's the Pa... oh, never mind, the taxi's here.

I thought Maryland was between Stratford and Forest Gate...

I'm not particularly au fait with American law, but the scenario you describe isn't against the law in Europe. The fact that one of the supposed 'criminals' was a cop doesn't mean anything. It would only become an issue if the police had somehow encouraged the perpetrator to commit an offense; being an undercover cop is different to being an agent provocateur.

In this case the issue centres a lot more about the actions of the 'mother of his friend' and whether she pushed him to do it on the advice of the police. When this story first broke the lad was reportedly saying he'd felt "pressured" to talk to the hit-man, but it seems he's changed tack now and owned up to it.

life is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike video games.

let's say an actual contract killer was desperate enough to accept the job on a contingency basis (which would be pretty uncommon, i would think). once the parents are dead, the boy is a material witless...er, witness.

a down-on-his-luck killer (male in this case - i don't doubt the ladies' prowess, no flames please) would likely shoot the kid, and take anything else that was valuable in the house, console included. this would make it look like a random burglary, and earn some much-needed cash from fencing the stuff (driving a few states over, or to Vegas, and fencing it there, would help conceal the origins of the stuff).

in this case, "young and dumb" is an accurate description. cart his ass off to juvie (i worked in one briefly, on an IT migration project), no loss to the world.

"How can he be up on an attempted murder charge if there was no actual attempt on the parents life. Surely 'Conspiracy to commit murder' would be a better charge, or does such a charge not exist in the US system."

THe charge in most states would be conspiracy to commit murder , Solicitation of murder

i thought maryland was a biscuit .....

I don't believe the charge of attempted murder is wrong, the prosecution is trying to show how serious this offense is. There was a clear motives and actions to arrange a murder attempt and only 1 step away to get them killed, if the undercover cop was actually a hitman, their parents could be dead by now.

... that parents ought to buy the Wii for their kids .

... is a railway station in Newham. If my parents made me live in a railway station then I'd have had them offed, and rightly so.

Offering the family van as payment ... a van that would be tracked real quick. Not only the kid would be stupid, any professional hitman would not accept that as payment! Sheesh, looks like the kid doesn't know much about real life stuff.

Never been to America but I know where Maryland is. Maybe you're guilty of not knowing enough about the world in which you live? I don't know every town or city in every country, but enough to know that Maryland is a state in the USA. Just like DC or Florida.

@Carl:

Glad you know that DC is a state in the USA. I always was taught it was a District....

Film at eleven.

Though I wonder if anyone would have ever known had there not been the officer pretending to be a killer for hire. I'd think that without the cops "assistance", the boy would have gotten over his ire and perhaps learned lessons that didn't involve incarceration.

Decode this bit to a sequence of events:

Unfortunately, the alleged hitman was an undercover cop tasked with revealing the plot after the mother of one of the boy's friends overheard Ryder discussing the murder of his own mother. The unnamed pal's mum reported the matter local police and was later asked to take Ryder, then aged 16, to meet the plain-clothes policeman on 2 June.

I.E., Boy's friend tells his mom, who tells the cops, who ask the friend's mom to lead the boy into the sting.

How could the friend's mom lead the boy into the sting without effectively going "why that's a fine idea, here let me introduce you to a professional"?