A chilling crime has taken place in eastern Arizona. An 8-year-boy was charged with two counts of premeditated murder after he gunned down his father and another man, St. Johns Police Chief Roy Melnick said.

The crime occurred on Wednesday when the boy’s father, 29-year-old Vincent Romero, and 39-year-old Timothy Romans were fatally shot. Police reportedly arrived at the crime scene shortly after the shootings took place. One victim was just outside the front door, while the other was found dead in an upstairs room. Police arrived at the scene at about 5 p.m. Wednesday, within minutes after the neighbors reported hearing gunfire.

The 8-year-old boy, whose identity wasn’t revealed yet, first said he knew nothing about what had happened, but later confessed, Melnick said.

St. Johns, a community of about 4,000 people, is located about 170 miles northeast of Phoenix.

"This is precedent-setting. We're going to charge an 8-year-old with two counts of homicide," Police Chief Roy Melnick said for The Arizona Republic.

County Attorney Criss Candelaria told the newspaper that he hasn’t had anything similar in Apache County in his 23 years as a prosecutor.
 
Police Chief Melnick refused to discuss the probable motives that led the child to commit the horrendous crimes or how he came to have the gun.

The cases of juvenile murderers are very rare and also extremely difficult for the justice system. According to FBI's Uniform Crime Report lists, there were no murder defendants under the age of 9 in the past 3 years.

A quite similar case happened in 1998 in Illinois when a 7-year-old and an 8-year-old were accused of killing an 11-year-old. They were both exonerated as specialist tend to consider the juvenile murderers as products of abuse.