The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s office has released shocking bodycam footage of deputies trying to de-escalate a scary situation with two young boys. The incident reportedly occurred in February 2025 and involved a 7-year-old boy and a 9-year-old boy handling a loaded handgun. The children are reportedly brothers and somehow got hold of the deadly weapon at their home. When police arrived, they attempted to negotiate with the kids to no avail. Ultimately, they had to make a difficult decision.
In footage obtained by Police Activity, deputies talk to the boys trying to convince them to drop the gun. After several minutes and their refusal to comply, officers fired a “less-lethal round.” It distracts the boys and police ultimately safely grabbed the gun from them. Deputies quickly handcuffed the boys and moved them from the area where the incident took place.
Per the Albuquerque Journal, Sheriff John Allen, said in a news conference that one of the boys had pulled the trigger. Luckily, the gun malfunctioned, he shared, adding, “our deputies could have taken deadly force. That would not have gone well with anybody in the nation.”
Allen said the sheriff’s office had responded to at least 50 calls at the home before the February 16 incident. Deputy Deanna Aragon said no one faced charges in the incident. The sheriff’s office safely confiscated the weapon from the home and removed it. The boys still live in the home with their parents.
“Children are our future, and we know one side is going to say, ‘Lock them in jail.’ They’re 7 and 9 years old. I told you before, numerous times in numerous interviews, that I understand the frontal lobe,” Allen said, per the Journal.
“Arresting people isn’t the only way out of this crisis of juvenile crime,” he added. “You have to look at it from a bunch of different avenues and use the resources you have, and then criminal elements can come later.”
Behavioral Health Unit Clinical Manager Michael Lucero said they’ve run into multiple barriers getting the children a mental health evaluation.
“As you can imagine, if you’re in crisis and you’re suffering from major mental illness and possibly co-occurring disorders such as substance use, it’s very difficult to navigate multiple systems,” Lucero said. “And we have highly educated, highly skilled people on this team, and it took all of us just to navigate multiple systems, and we are still running into barriers while working this case.”
The footage shocked many people who couldn’t believe what they saw.
“The courage of that officer to go up there and just take the weapon like a man, that it something to behold. Kudos to that officer for risking his life to prevent unnecessary dead,” one person commented. “That was a dad and an officer of the public who knew how to handle business and did it.”
Others found the boys’ behavior worrisome.
“That age not listening to adults they’ve had No parenting, that’s not normal behavior from kid’s of that age! Talk about dropping the Ball, those parents should be investigated,” someone else wrote.
One person made a scary observation: “Those kids were eerily calm during the whole thing and even going so far as to point the fun at officers. Even when getting put in handcuffs, they didn’t struggle or anything and the one kid constantly saying he doesn’t have the gun. You’d think as kids, getting non lethals shot at you or then put in handcuffs would cause some kind of panic or something but they were like dead calm,” the person wrote. “I sadly have a feeling these two or going to be seeing law enforcement a lot more in the future. Also those parents need to be charged if those kids are able to get access to a firearm that easily.”
