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Police say the boy confessed to planning and carrying out the shooting deaths of Romero, 29, and co-worker Timothy Romans, 39, who rented a room from him. The men were found shot to death inside Romero's home in the small eastern Arizona community northeast of Phoenix last week.
Police and neighbors are at a loss to explain why he would have used a .22-caliber rifle to kill his father and another man at their home.
"That child, I don't think he knows what he did, and it was brutal," said the family priest, the Very Rev. John Paul Sauter.
The third-grader is due in court Monday, the same day as a funeral Mass scheduled to be held for his dad at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church.
In a sign of the emotional and legal complexities of the case, police are pushing to have the boy tried as an adult even as they investigate possible abuse, St. Johns Police Chief Roy Melnick said. If convicted as a minor, the boy could be sent to juvenile detention until he turns 18.