Teen said he reloaded the guns so “he could drive to a populated area to murder more people”, according to the statement.
His plan, the statement said, was to “shoot people at random and eventually be killed while exchanging gunfire with law enforcement”.
The US teenager accused of fatally shooting his parents and three younger siblings told authorities he was annoyed with his mother and had been having homicidal and suicidal thoughts, according to a probable cause statement.
Nehemiah Griego, 15, remained in custody on Monday on charges of murder and child abuse resulting in death.
Griego told the detective that his brother did not believe him that their mother was dead so he showed his mother’s bloody face to his brother and then shot him, according to the statement.
He was arrested following the shootings Saturday at a home in a rural area south-west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he lived with his family.
A family wiped out … a bouquet of flowers adorns the entrance to a home where Nehemiah Griego allegedly killed his parents and siblings. Photo: APA Bernalillo County sheriff’s detective questioned the teen on Saturday night and the details of their conversation were spelled out in the statement.
The teen allegedly told the detective that he took a .22 calibre rifle from his parents’ closet about midnight on Saturday and shot his mother in the head while his younger brother slept next to her.
Griego told the detective that his brother did not believe him that their mother was dead so he showed his mother’s bloody face to his brother and then shot him, according to the statement.
Multiple deaths … police search for evidence. Photo: APHe’s accused of then shooting his two young sisters in their room. He retrieved an AR-15 rifle from his parents’ closet and waited in a downstairs bathroom for his father to come home. The statement said he shot his father multiple times after he passed the bathroom doorway.
The teen said he reloaded the guns so “he could drive to a populated area to murder more people”, according to the statement.
His plan, the statement said, was to “shoot people at random and eventually be killed while exchanging gunfire with law enforcement”.
Sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Aaron Williamson said on Monday he couldn’t immediately comment on the document.
Detectives have spent two days collecting evidence and trying to piece together what led to the violence.
“There’s no other way to say it, except that we have a horrific crime scene down there that we are working on,” Bernalillo County Sheriff Dan Houston said on Sunday.
The detectives had finished their work at the home by Monday afternoon. The metal gate at the home’s entrance was shut, a small bouquet of purple flowers was on the top of the gate and at each side there were religious signs, including one that read “Jesus is the reason for the season”.
The sheriff’s office identified the victims as Greg Griego, 51, his wife Sarah Griego, 40, and three of their children: a nine-year-old boy, Zephania Griego, and daughters Jael Griego, 5, and Angelina Griego, 2. All appeared to have gunshot wounds to the head.
Greg Griego was a pastor who had once served at Calvary, one of Albuquerque’s largest Christian churches.
He was also well-known throughout the law enforcement community for his work as a voluntary chaplain.
Neighbour Terry Wootan described Griego as a man with a big heart. The two sometimes chatted at the mailbox and would wave to each other when passing by. Wootan said Griego told him about his time in California when he was involved in gangs and how he turned his life around and found God.
“What he wanted to do was help people, and he would never quit,” Wootan said.
The pastor’s death has shocked the community, including the Albuquerque Fire Department and the Metropolitan Detention Centre, where he volunteered his spiritual guidance.
A records check by the Children, Youth and Families Department indicated no trouble with the Griego family and that Nehemiah Griego had never been in trouble with the law.
“This youth had no history with the juvenile justice system,” agency spokesman Bob Tafoya said on Monday.
Williamson confirmed there was no history of any emergency calls to the home in the recent past.
Neighbours said they saw the first police cars and ambulances arrive at the home on Saturday night. The road was blocked and word of the shootings began to make its way through the neighbourhood.
According to the probable cause statement, Nehemiah Griego first told a staff member at Calvary that his family was dead and that he placed the two rifles in the family van as protection before driving to the church.
He later changed his story, according to the detective’s statement.
Asked if he had told anyone else about murdering his family, Griego allegedly told the detective that he had taken a picture of his dead mother and sent it to his girlfriend.
Sheriff Dan Houston plans to hold a news conference on Tuesday morning, and the teen could make his first court appearance in the next day or two.
#1 by Naeem on January 22, 2013 - 5:58 pm
WOW cold blooded murder on his siblings and mother america is heading towards a big cliff.
#2 by tsunami on January 22, 2013 - 7:01 pm
You have entered.. the biblical conspiracy zone
#3 by annebeck58 on January 22, 2013 - 7:23 pm
Uh-oh.
Third picture.. woman with brown hair, parted on the left. WHO wants to bet me that someone will say it’s the same brunette said to be both an, “actor for FEMA”, as well as the, “mother of dead (or not dead) Sandy Hook child”? And, now she shows up at another terrible murder-scene?
NO; I do not believe this is the same woman. But, I can see someone(s) going there, because people are desperate to, “prove”, that our government is murdering (or pretending to) American citizens, just to say they can.
One more time; a youngster went whacko. Who knows why? Perhaps he does, but will he explain his actions? Is it just surges of testosterone, spats with parents, along with access to guns? We do not know until and unless the kid speaks.
But, I do believe his family is dead. I do not need to see photographs to comprehend this.
And, Albequerque is old-hippy town, so that they chose the name, Nehemiah, for their eldest son does not surprise me. It’s not a common name, but this is probably why they chose it.
My own kids do not have common names, either, and their father and I met in art-school. That’s pretty much all there is to that. The name, alone, says nothing about their religious or cultural backgrounds, to me, except that they are probably artistically-inclined, and as further proof of that, they lived in an artists community.
#4 by Paulo Panigale on January 22, 2013 - 8:55 pm
Another teen killing people; this time his own family. When was the last time a convicted felon massacred a bunch of innocent people, if ever?? It’s always some kook with a clean record and nothing to prevent him from legally obtaining firearms. Just goes to show how impotent gun laws are. They don’t prevent millions of crack dealers and other felons from having guns. It’s so absurd.
If you’re convicted of a felony, even in the third degree, you are banned for life from owning firearms, short of getting a Presidential Pardon, and good luck with that. Obama had pardoned like 9 people, out of the many thousands of applicants, the least of any president, by far. Violent or serious felonies, yes; but there’s some pretty innocuous things that qualify as a felony. People should not be automatically banned for life, depending on the offense. 5 or 10 years? Without another arrest? OK.
I know a guy who was convicted of a third degree felony for improper storage of hazardous materials; he owned an auto paint shop. He’s a stand-up guy with a family; the only arrest in his life and he’s now 53; gun-less now for 17 years and still waiting for that elusive pardon after 13 years. Bullshit.
Meanwhile, how can you predict when the next person, who has never been arrested for anything, decides to fly off the handle? Will this crazed punk be tried as an adult and receive a life sentence?
#5 by isaac on January 22, 2013 - 10:29 pm
and did Obama said anything about the real danger of our society? The real danger are the Zionist controlled videos, Hollywood, magazines all we see is murder, crime, blood and plenty of phonographic scenes on TV every day. Obama didn’t mention any thing about that in his speech?.
#6 by Bill on January 22, 2013 - 11:11 pm
Anne,
No question are culture is decadent and degenerate, about 11,000 murders per year, 95+% of which are handgun related.
But to mock those questioning Sandy Hook is to mock the truth itself. ie FEMA Drills, No tears from parents, Professional Actors interviewed employed doing bilingual interviews, multiple perps running from the school into the woods, Lone gunmen using a Stolen car, and the soon to be bestseller based on reeal life narrative :6 children run from the school, past 100 armed police, into a school bus thta is not blocked in, and being dropped off at Jew Gene Rosens Home et al
Hey, Speaking of Trained actors on the scene CIT Crisis Actors, Here is your acting audition of Greeburg Sexton, whose father headed AIG.
Note: (CIT removed from Google their page about Crisis Actos, but some of us managed to save it to hard drive)
Heres the Laura Phelps SandyHook Acting Interviewer in a sold out play: Jennifer Greenberg Sexton (You saw her on CNN & other News outlets)
#7 by Bill on January 22, 2013 - 11:27 pm
#8 by annebeck58 on January 23, 2013 - 12:06 am
Bill, but these are not questions, they are accusations.
How does any one of us know how we’d react until and unless it happens to us? Who are we to accuse others of, “acting”, when the information is there to prove what they’ve lived through, yet not there to prove they are, “actors”.
I could not even imagine what these families are dealing with without the accusations. That put it over the top, for me, and i am embarrassed for the entire, “truth movement”, due to the horrible things written and presented online and probably other places.
People; family members, are harassed constantly, when they deserve a bit of peace, as well as compassion. I do NOT care if some of the families happened to be Jewish. I don’t care that someone supposedly had a connection to the Vatican (a great-uncle or second-cousin of one of the dead children.)
These children are dead. would you like to have to PROVE your own child dead? And, how would you go about dong so?
Like I said; questions are one thing. Accusations and harassment is quite another. I think the behaviours shown these families is deplorable. What kind of sick society IS this?
#9 by KPRyan on January 23, 2013 - 2:25 am
First, if real, this is another red-letter day for Israel’s united states.
Interesting to look at ‘Calvary Church’ where the apparent shooter’s father was a pastor.
Calvary is a mega church. What are mega churches nearly always devoted to???? (I say ‘nearly’ always because there may be 1 out there somewhere that I’ve never heard of that is actually devoted to Jesus, though I doubt it.) Mega ‘Christian’ Churches are nearly always devoted to zionism and the bs that is the ‘rapture’ and the lie that Jews are God’s ‘Chosen’.
Interesting too that Skip Heitzig, the founder of this outfit was, according to his biography on the church’s website, “experienced the volatile days of the counter-culture in the late 60s” and was “caught up in drugs and … the occult”, before “one day in 1973 as he was watching a Billy Graham crusade on TV. The Gospel message penetrated his soul…” Yes, likely something penetrated him that fateful day….
Perhaps it is nothing but I have to look askance at anyone pastoring at such a church and/or anyone associated with a police dept in this USA .
#10 by Ingrid B on January 23, 2013 - 6:15 pm
annebeck58 says : “One more time; a youngster went whacko. Who knows why?” :
A few years ago, I heard of some kids in a village, somewhere in South America. They`d been experimenting with a ouija board, and all of them developed schizophrenia. The villagers decided they were possessed, and were conducting excorcism. Kids are so vulnerable, and should be protected..
#11 by annebeck58 on January 24, 2013 - 12:35 am
I was just talking with a friend, about this, too.
I don’t know that it’s happening more often than it did when we were kids. I do know that we get our news, one way or the other, and immediately– on all of it. So it may just seem it is happening more often?
Then again, when we were kids, other kids were not drugged up with homicide/ suicide meds. Now, just about any kid who’s shown some problem getting along with other kids or teachers is prescribed something and is ostracized, like never before.
Putting kids in, “special classes”, and making sure they are heavily medicated (school nurses dole-out meds during the day to ensure the kids are taking the drugs prescribed by school counsellors!) has certainly contributed to the problems and the kiling sprees. And, it’s all school-sanctioned.
I know there was at least one, “weird”, kid in my classes, every year; nobody thought to put them in classes away from us and/or drug them, either. Why are parents allowing this to be done?
I think, if someone had tried to do this to either of my kids, I would have taken them out of, the system and taught them at home. But, I guess not every parent has that option?
Maybe our priorities are completely screwed up?