Derek and Alex King beat their father’s head in with a baseball bat as he slept, on the night of Nov. 26, 2001. They then set fire to the house.
A year later, the boys plead guilty in a Pensacola court. According to the Pensacola News Journal, Derek admitted to bashing his father’s head in and Alex admitted to being the mastermind. The boys were sentenced to eight and seven years in prison, respectively. According to the News Journal, the King boys’ sentences were so short because of “a court-ordered, mediated settlement almost unheard of in a major crime.”
Last December, 29 days into their state prison sentences, the Department of Juvenile Justice moved the young murderers to separate juvenile detention centers.
Moving the Kings to such a facility is an outrage.
Circuit Judge Frank Bell, who presided over the King boys’ trial, strongly opposed the move. According to the News Journal, Bell wrote to the Department of Juvenile Justice saying, “To give the King brothers any more consideration than what they have already received would not be in the best interest of anyone.”
It is puzzling why Derek and Alex King received “more consideration” in the first place.
The same year the King boys killed their father, Nathaniel Brazill was sentenced to 28 years in prison for fatally shooting his teacher at age 13. Lionel Tate received life in prison for beating 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick to death at age 12.
Derek and Alex King are killers. Brazill and Tate are killers. Surely if Brazill and Tate deserve their sentences, Derek and Alex King deserve to spend more than seven or eight years in juvenile detention. They’ve received too many breaks.
Derek and Alex King bashed their father’s head in and set him on fire. They need to serve their time in prison, not in a boarding school surrounded by barbed wire.
Augustine Rho for The Famuan