Bay Area teen admits killing boy, 9, in jailhouse interview, reports say

A Bay Area teen who was arrested on suspicion of stabbing to death his best friend’s sleeping 9-year-old brother apparently confessed to the crime in a jailhouse interview Monday, according to reports.

William Shultz, 18, told a reporter with the Contra Costa Times that he stabbed Jordon Almgren in the predawn hours on Sunday, saying, “I wanted to see what it was like to take a life before someone tried to take mine.”

Almgren’s family took him from their home in Discovery Bay, about 60 miles east of San Francisco, to a county hospital, where he died.

After inadvertently slashing himself in the wrist during the stabbing, Shultz told the paper, he drove to the hospital for treatment. There, a nurse linked him to news reports about Almgren’s death and alerted authorities, sheriff’s officials said.

He was arrested at the hospital and is being held at a Contra Costa County jail on $1-million bail, sheriff’s officials said.

In the interview with the paper, Shultz discussed his parents’ divorce, his challenging youth in the town of Discovery Bay, and the weeks that led up to the deadly stabbing, which included a trip to the Los Angeles area to visit relatives.

Shultz told the paper that he purchased survival gear last week -- including the knife authorities say was used in the killing -- to prepare for a trek to South America, a trip spurred by his belief that civil war would engulf the United States.

“I saw it as the world was sorta coming to an end,” he told the Contra Costa Times. After he told his mother, she became concerned about his mental state. “She wanted me to see a psychiatrist,” he said.

Sheriff’s spokesman Jimmy Lee told the paper that deputies were called to Shultz’s home on the day before the killing because his family was concerned about his mental health.

Shultz was not eligible for a mental health hold, Lee said, but he voluntarily went to the hospital for an evaluation.

Later that day, he was discharged and sent home in a taxi, he said. After fighting with his mother, he went to the home of the Almgren family, he said.

About 3 a.m. Sunday, he said paranoia overcame him. “I couldn’t sleep,” he told the paper. “I had all these thoughts going through my mind.”

He walked into his friend’s brother’s bedroom, where the boy was sleeping.

“At the time, there was no feeling … I was asking myself, ‘Why am I standing over him? What am I about to do?’

“I put my hand over his face and stabbed him,” the Contra Costa Times quoted him as saying.

During the newspaper interview, Shultz expressed some remorse.

“I wish that I hadn’t. I think about what if that was my little brother,” Shultz told the newspaper. “In that sense, I do feel bad. I do have remorse for what I did.... But there’s a reason for everything that happens.”

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