Regional news website 47 Novostey said the suspected ringleader is 15 years old. The boy was killed when the game the group were playing in the village of Glebychevo turned violent, and the ringleader ordered his friends to "shut the child's mouth." He then stabbed the boy several times.
The victim's mother, a 29-year-old kindergarten teacher, went to the nearby town of Primorsk to report her son as missing on April 20. Police discovered the body in a wood the following afternoon, 200 meters from a highway.
The child is believed to have died from a head injury. The body also had three stab wounds to the stomach, a chest injury, and bruising.
The three teenagers, whose dates of birth were given as 1993, 1993 and 1996, had failed to show up at school, and were soon arrested. After the killing, they took the child's jacket and cell phone, before hiding the body in the wood.
