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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Utah teenager charged with sexually assaulting and killing a 12-year-old neighbor girl after luring her from home with a story about a lost cat is not mentally competent to stand trial, a juvenile court judge decided Friday.
The 17-year-old has more than one condition that keeps him from understanding the charges and possible penalties, Judge James Michie decided. He said the teen could become competent for trial with treatment, though, and ordered officials to create a 6-month plan before a new hearing in January.
The Associated Press is not naming the defendant because he is a juvenile.
The teenager is charged with aggravated murder and rape of a child in the July 2015 death of Kailey Vijil, whose body was found with a shirt wrapped around her neck in an overgrown horse pasture near their neighborhood in a Salt Lake City suburb. Police have said the teen also tried to lure at least one other neighborhood girl from her home earlier that night.
"Kailey's kind of been forgotten in all this, it's been all about the defendant," said Spencer Banks, a lawyer for the victim's family who described her as a girl who loved animals and cosplay costumes. Though the decision is particularly difficult during the holiday season, "they are optimistic that justice for Kailey will be served eventually, it's just delayed."
The teen's lawyers have long questioned whether he can participate in his defense. He's been treated in the past for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, his lawyers have said, but exact details about his current condition have not been made public. Defense attorneys declined to comment Friday.
The judge's ruling came after days of testimony from several witnesses, including three experts who examined the boy, but that hearing was closed to the public because of his age.
Prosecutors have said they want him tried as an adult due to the seriousness of the allegations.
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