Ronnie Lee Greene Jr., 18, was fatally shot in the head outside a Pontiac, Michigan party store on October 30, 1997. The weapon used was a stolen .22-caliber rifle. Two days later police arrested 11-year-old Nathaniel Abraham at school and charged him with second-degree murder under a Michigan law that allowed children of any age to be prosecuted as adults for serious crimes.

At trial Abraham’s defense said the shooting was accidental, that he had been firing at targets and did not intend to hit Greene. Prosecutors introduced evidence that Abraham had told a friend he intended to shoot someone and later boasted about the act. In November 1999 a jury found Abraham guilty of second-degree murder and acquitted him of first-degree murder. He was sentenced as a juvenile with the possibility of release at age 21.

What details about Greene’s death or the events that night might help explain how an 11-year-old came to possess a stolen rifle?