In a gruesome sign that the culture of kidnapping and cartel-style murder that permeates Mexico has seeped into the psyches of the country’s young, authorities have revealed a 6-year-old boy was murdered by five other children while playing out a game of kidnap.

The boy, Christopher Raymundo Marquez, was allegedly invited to play and collect firewood from a waste ground near his home in Chihuahua by older kids that ranged in ages from 12 to 15, according to the Daily Mail.

As the group reached a stream, the children told Christopher that they were going fake a kidnapping, whereupon they tied the boy's hands and feet together and proceeded to beat the child with a thorn-covered stick.

The kids then reportedly stoned the bound lad and suffocated him with the stick, pressing it against his neck, which eventually lead to his death. After the child perished, one of the group went so far as to stab the corpse in the back.

On Saturday, after two days of being missing, the boy’s body was found buried face-down in a shallow grave in Chihuahua.

Authorities said that the children responsible for his death (a boy of 12, two girls aged 13, and two other boys aged 15) had tried to conceal the crime by covering the shallow grave he was placed in with weeds as well as a dead animal.

State prosecutor Sergio Almaraz detailed the particulars of the crime, saying that the boy had been killed during a “game of kidnap,” and went on to say that the children involved in his death had admitted to the crime.

One of the more disturbing aspects of this already hideous crime is the alleged spontaneity in which events escalated. As Almaraz described the tragedy, he noted that: “While they were playing, one of the 15-year-olds suggested to the others that they should kill Christopher. It wasn't planned. It was a condition of the game they played.”

Although the kids were only acting out a kidnapping, as reported by the Washington Post, Mexico’s official number of real kidnappings was 1,698 in 2014.