As news filtered in about the Newtown shootings, one student reported seeing a gun in a fellow student’s backpack.
That happened last Friday afternoon at King-Robinson School.
Assistant Police Chief Thaddeus Reddish happened to be in the building at the time. New Haven police were dropping in on all city schools at the time to offer reassurance as the public learned about the massacre of children inside a school 25 miles away in Newtown.
A student made the report to a school aide. The aide told the school’s principal, Nadine Gannon. She was with Reddish at the time.
They brought the student with the backpack in for a discussion. They found the weapon in his bag. It turned out to be a BB gun — which is still illegal to carry.
The boy, who’s 13 and from Ansonia (King-Robinson is a regional magnet school), offered conflicting stories, Reddish said. “He didn’t want to leave it at the house,” the student told Reddish at one point. “Other kids were picking on him,” the student said at another.
Police confiscated the BB gun and arrested the boy. He hasn’t been back to school, according to Sgt. Ricardo Rodriguez, who supervises the police department’s school-based officers. Under Board of Ed policy he will be considered for expulsion.
Meanwhile, earlier last week, police arrested a 17-year-old High School in the Community (HSC) student for carrying a gun.
She wasn’t caught carrying it at school.
Rather, on Monday of that week, she left a jacket at the main public library branch. Staffers found a .22-caliber Derringer pistol inside. They contacted the cops.
Hours later the girl returned to claim the jacket. She admitted the jacket and gun were hers, according to top downtown cop Lt. Rebecca Sweeney. She was arrested and transported to the juvenile detention facility in Bridgeport. She had previously been arrested on an aggravated assault charge.
The incident sent shudders down the spines of library workers who knew about the incident, especially after the events later in the week in Newtown. HSC “building leader” (aka principal) Erik Good said the school is “still processing” the incident and has not taken disciplinary action against the student.
Funny that a BB gun is illegal but a child can purchase an assault rifle from a private dealer, with a hundred bullets in the magazine, no questions asked, and it is perfectly legal.