The case of the assault and murder of 8-year-old Madyson Middleton is frustrating for a new reason as more friends and classmates speak out about the only suspect in the case, 15-year-old Adrian Gonzalez. Though his now-deleted Instagram perhaps showed him to be somewhat of a brooding teenager, there's very little evidence of the kind of dark-hearted nature that one would assume could make a person capable of this horrific crime.
The New York Times picked up the story late Wednesday, noting that Gonzalez "was among the oldest children of about 50" who lived at and roamed the Tannery Arts housing complex in Santa Cruz, saying that though he was "lower-energy than the rest," he was "generally in command" of the group. This is according to Middleton's mother's boyfriend, who also lives at the complex.
Since several media outlets discovered Gonzalez's Instagram on Wednesday, much has been made of the fact that his final post before the murder on Sunday was a short video of him playing the Tears For Fears song "Mad World" on a keyboard. Beside this he posted the lyrics, "The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had," which an "exclusive source" of KRON 4 has spuriously used to assert that Gonzalez "wanted to kill himself" and therefore raped and killed Middleton, which doesn't exactly follow.
One classmate says that Gonzalez was "sweet and down-to-earth" and was always "making small jokes in class" and playing with his yo-yo. Others have said that he mostly kept to himself, and played piano in the school jazz band. No one so far has described him as brooding, unstable, or otherwise scary.
You can here more of his classmates' quotes in the footage below.
