The vast majority of these children and adolescents are from disfunctional families, often from delinquent fathers that work for drug dealers at moving the drugs on the streets, or single mothers that can't care for their 3 or 4 childs, so they abandon them to the streets, to fend for themselves while they work all day to bring something to eat for the most young. These children feel the urge to belong to some kind of group where they may find the protection, love and respect that they don't receive at home, and be it for lack of money or just to prove their worth in front of others, allow themselves to be tricked by criminal elements, into selling drugs or into becoming assassins for hire and this way earn a higher status in the criminal world.

This status gives them fame, money, weapons, motorcycles, the admiration of teenager girls... the need for this higher status, added to the degree of unemployment, the culture of violence that is lived on the streets and the social conditions, push them down a path with no return, with death as the ultimate cost.

Authorities have established that the majority of murders are performed by child and adolescent assassins that changed their classrooms for the street.

One of the most extreme stories is that of 9 year old Daniel, who entered the colombian assassin school through a friend at school. To get permission from his mother, he told her he was going to work at the coffee farms during the season.

"We started out killing dogs at the farms and that's how they measured us", said Daniel in his testimony. The "graduation" as a assassin demanded the murder of any person, as long as it involved some degree of danger and exposure. Daniel was assigned a man who he followed for 4 days and murdered at the main park.

After this, he was ordered to attend the funeral to make sure no one saw him commit the crime. After completing these conditions, the child was pronounced a professional assassin.

For seven years Daniel lived in this "profession". One afternoon of 2003, armed men broke into his house and shot him in front of his mother. His mother's kneeled cries for mercy were useless. "Mother, don't beg anymore", Daniel himself told her, "there is nothing more to be done here".

It appears that this is the destiny of all child and adolescent assassins. "They last one or two years as bodyguards for the dealers", said one repented drug leader. "They are paid between 2,000 and 2,500 dollars monthly, but in the end are executed by their own bosses to keep their secrets".