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Since age 10, Travis Hylton has been in and out of the Pima County juvenile court system, having been arrested on 44 criminal offenses in seven years.

All but six of those charges have been dismissed based on the fact that doctors deemed Hylton — now 17 — incompetent to stand trial and unable to assist in his defense.

Now Hylton sits in jail on three counts of attempted murder.

His latest arrest, in which he is accused of shooting one Tucson police officer and stabbing another Sunday during a domestic-violence dispute, has him facing adult charges — charges that his mother feels could have been avoided had her cries for help been answered years ago.

"I reached out for help but you have to rely on the system for assistance, and I could not get any for Travis," Sharon Russell said. "Once they would let him go home, any services he was getting would disappear.

"This incident obviously shows that had more been done by the system, this could have been prevented."

Juvenile court records show more than half of the charges on which Hylton has been arrested were in connection with assaults. The victims of the assaults include teachers and school staffers, group-home employees, police and corrections officers, Hylton's siblings, the mother of his young child and his mother. Other charges during this span include criminal damage, threats, disorderly conduct and robbery.

In October 2000, Hylton, then 10, was arrested on two counts of aggravated assault against teachers or staff and one count of criminal damage to a school, court records show.

A delinquency petition was filed and a hearing was scheduled, but before any determination was made, Hylton would be arrested two more times that year on criminal damage, trespassing, disorderly conduct and assault charges.

The following February, Hylton would be arrested on assault and threat charges, and by March he was placed in a group home, documents show.

In April 2001, Hylton's public defender requested he be examined to determine if he was competent for trial because the defender was unable to have any meaningful communication with Hylton.

It was not until that June that a ruling would be made. By that time Hylton had been arrested on 16 criminal offenses.

At that time, Hylton was found not competent to stand trial, court documents said. It was not believed that competency would be restored in a reasonable amount of time.

As a result, all the charges were dropped and he was no longer being held, court documents show. The doctor at the time said Hylton suffered from "organic brain impairment."

A month after the June 2001 dismissal, Hylton was back in custody on an assault charge.

The court, counsel and parties involved discussed dismissing the charge because of the previous determination, court records show.

Sandy Bean, Hylton's probation officer at the time, said that until the boy was found guilty of an offense, he would not receive the necessary services, records show. The charge would be dismissed a month after the incident in August 2001.

In December 2003, Hylton was arrested on an assault charge, followed by an arrest weeks later when he reportedly pushed his mother, injuring her arm.

Russell saw her son continue to go through a revolving justice door in which he would be arrested, be evaluated by a doctor to determine competency, be deemed incompetent and see the charges dismissed.

Russell would often tell the court that she would not allow her son to come back home in an effort to force him into a program where he would get the help he needed, she said.

"But they always sent him home, even though I knew he wasn't ready," she said.

Through 2006 all charges brought against Hylton were dismissed. It was not until he was arrested again last May that doctors were able to determine that while he was still incompetent, there was a good chance that competency could be restored within six months.

In that incident, police say Hylton was yelling inside his mother's home and pushed the mother of his child.

He reportedly pushed his mother and punched his sister. When officers tried to arrest him, he ran and was caught by a police dog that bit him, documents state.

Charges of attempted escape, disorderly conduct, criminal damage and three counts of assault were filed against him.

Two months ago, the court determined that Hylton was unable to stand trial for that incident, but he would have to attend an outpatient competency-restoration program.

Officials were set to revisit Hylton's competency over the months that followed, but on Sunday Hylton was arrested after getting into a struggle with a Tucson police officer, stabbing him and taking his gun, which Hylton used to shoot another officer, police say. Both officers had serious but not life-threatening injuries.

Hylton was shot and wounded by another officer. Tucson police have had about 100 contacts with Hylton since 2000.

The actual number of times Hylton has been arrested could not be determined through records. Many of the incidents involved multiple charges.

Russell said she hopes the officers in Sunday's incident are OK. "My regards go out to the officers who were injured and their families."