After the death of Sophia in season two Carl starts to become an obnoxious little punk. At some point he is conveniently left alone to make terrible decisions, which is of course what happens. He discovers a zombie stuck in the mud and instead of doing the sensible thing and either backing away or killing it, he decides to have some fun. He throws rocks at it and entices it by standing really close. Predictably the zombie breaks free and attacks Carl but he gets away. However later in the episode Dale gets killed by the same zombie, making it all Carl's fault. It's pretty easy to see why Carl's actions here were dumb. He endangered himself and in doing so got a person killed. How stupid do you have to be to troll a zombie knowing full well how dangerous they are? Yes, Carl is a kid, but that's a pretty lame excuse. He has had plenty of first hand experience watching his friends die to inform him not to take any risks. But he does, and it nearly kills him. At least Carl acknowledges his role in Dale's death, even while Shane tries to convince him it wasn't really his fault. But we know this isn't true. It was totally Carl's fault. His actions led that zombie back to the farm and it killed Dale. There's kids being kids and then there's just plain incompetence, and in this instance Carl falls in the latter.
