An 11-year-old boy was arrested in this trailer park after an 8-year-old girl was shot and killed.The suspect sat crying in the back of a patrol car, his wrists too tiny for handcuffs, as Monroe County authorities pondered this quandary - could they jail a second grader?
At age 8, the boy had just been charged with delinquency by reason of murder after authorities said he stabbed his alcoholic mother's abusive boyfriend once in the chest as the boyfriend beat her. His January 2000 arrest ignited a firestorm in the Coker Creek community and made him among the youngest child murder suspects in the nation.
Fifteen years later, another East Tennessee child - 11-year-old Benny Tiller - faces delinquency by reason of murder charges in the fatal shooting Saturday of MaKayla Dyer, 8, in White Pine, a community just as close-knit as Coker Creek.
Read more from our news partners at KnoxNews.com.