In the latest episode of modern justice system absurdities, a 16-year-old boy has been found not guilty of both murder and manslaughter after fatally stabbing nine-year-old Aria Thorpe in her own home. The trial at Bristol Crown Court wrapped up with the jury deciding that plunging a 22-centimeter kitchen knife eight centimeters deep into a child's chest was just a tragic little oopsie. Under the current state of UK law, apparently all you need to beat a manslaughter charge is to claim you were just playing a friendly game of make-believe "fencing" to get a reaction.

The facts of the case are as grim as they are baffling. The defendant admitted he grabbed a massive kitchen knife, walked into the living room where Aria was sitting on the sofa, and started waving it around. He told the jury, "Then at some point I decided that I was going to try to make her flinch and scare her, to get a reaction. I leaned forward, acted like I was fencing." Surprise, surprise—the knife went directly into her chest. He pulled it out, watched her clutch her chest, and then decided the best course of action was to bail.

Instead of calling emergency services, our teenage protagonist walked to a nearby train station to hang out. He casually informed a group of kids that he had accidentally killed someone, borrowed a phone to search "what happens if you kill...", and hopped on a train before the cops finally caught up with him. This is the exact kind of behavior that elite legal minds apparently look at and think, "Yes, this is definitely just an innocent kid who had a bad day, no criminal negligence here."

Meanwhile, the victim's family is left to pick up the pieces of a shattered life. Aria's mother, Tori Hull, was out grinding an evening work shift to make some extra cash before Christmas. She had just picked up her happy, bubbly daughter from dance class, bought her some mini-pizzas, and left her watching YouTube. The last thing Aria said to her was, "see you after work mummy." Instead, a family friend came home at 6:00 p.m. to find the nine-year-old bleeding out on the living room floor.

Presiding judge Mrs. Justice O’Farrell summed up the trial by calling it a "tragic and shocking case" that caused strong feelings, noting that the boy "didn’t intend to kill her and did not intend to cause her really serious injury." Because in the UK legal system, waving a lethal weapon at a child to scare her is treated like a victimless prank until it suddenly isn't. The defense, led by Andrew Langdon KC, asked the boy how he felt about the whole ordeal, to which he replied, "I felt horrible." Well, that settles it then. Case closed.