An 11-year-old pint-sized perp from hell terrorized Albuquerque for weeks, netting himself a rap sheet already worthy of a career criminal with charges including shootings, burglaries and auto theft, cops say.
“Despite his age, this suspect is considered very dangerous because of his use of a firearm and his escalating violence,” said Harold Medina, police chief of the New Mexico city, in a statement after the diminutive Dillinger’s arrest Thursday night.
The first incident connected to the criminal kiddo dates back to May 5, when a car was stolen in the northeast of the city and recovered about an hour later, NBC reported.
A week later, on May 12, a woman was struck in the leg when four kids pelted her home with rocks trying to break the windows, cops said.
That same day, a 12-year-old also reported a group of boys throwing rocks at her house, identifying some of them as members of a neighborhood group of miscreants known as the “Kia Boys.”
But joyriding and chucking rocks was only the beginning for the kid, who quickly escalated his crime wave, authorities say.
In a commercial burglary incident allegedly tied to the youth, Albuquerque police said somebody driving a stolen car in reverse smashed through the front security door of a business and ransacked the place, resulting in more than $15,000 in damages and theft.
Cops said a man also called 911 on May 29 to report four boys in a blue Kia shot at him after he saw the car parked outside his home and asked them to leave. Cops said a .9mm bullet casing was found at the man’s home.
Just a few days later, authorities received a call from a man who said he’d been shot in the hand. Cops found a .9mm handgun at the scene.
In a post on X on Friday night, Chief Medina said it was “disappointing” that a boy so young was arrested for committing so many crimes and acknowledged that his “behavior was escalating and he was a danger to the community.”
Medina said he was “grateful that we took this young suspect into custody without our officers having to use force.”
The boy, whose name was not given because of his age, faces a litany of charges including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy, shooting at or from a motor vehicle, shooting into an occupied dwelling, aggravated battery, unlawful possession of a weapon by a minor, nonresidential burglary, criminal damage to property over $1,000, and conspiracy to commit a fourth-degree felony.
It was not immediately known if the boy had retained a lawyer.