8-year-old commits two acts of pre-meditated murder

Article link: http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/11/08/child.charged.ap/index.html

I was interested in this article first for the shock value of it, also the story takes place in Flagstaff, Arizona, and I have a 9-year-old neice who lives there. Then, as I read it, the lede is soft, and I agree, since this is such a tragic story no matter what perspective you take, it should be a bit softer. In fact, I think they could follow this up with a narrative. So, really, they probably could have made this one totally hard news and followed it up with a narrative. Either way, here is the lede:
It's a crime that police officers in a small eastern Arizona community can hardly fathom yet have to deal with: an 8-year-old charged in the fatal shootings of his father and another man.
It's definitely a soft lede, but the rest of the story kind of follows a hard news story, so it's a bit muddy.

It's followed by a quote where the St. Johns police chief is asking "Who would think an 8-year-old could kill adults?"
Then, the nut graf:
The crime that unfolded Wednesday evening sent shock waves through St. Johns, a community of about 4,000 people northeast of Phoenix. The boy had no disciplinary record at school, and there was no indication he had any problems at home, prosecutors said.

The rest of it seems very shocked, and doesn't really give background to why the boy would shoot the two men. All it does is raise more questions. He had no disciplinary background, they aren't saying what sort of relationship he had with his father, they really aren't saying much of anything except for, "I can't believe this happened, and it's really too bad he's going to jail." They have a confession, but his defense attorney says it wasn't conducted properly. The story and the investigation seems all over the place for how precise something like this needs to be.

It all gets even more irritating when the story ends with these two lines:
Brewer, the defense attorney, said the child "seems to be in good spirits."
"He's scared," he said. "He's trying to be tough, but he's scared."

The child seems to be in good spirits? What the heck is up with this story? I feel like there's so much going on that I'm not getting with this account. The whole situations seems absolutely random and it's made even more confusing by imagining the 8-year-old in good spirits. It makes me think he's on the spectrum for autism or was abused by this guy or something, anything to explain why he wouldn't be torn up from losing his father and even more emotional since he's the one who shot him.