St. Louis police are investigating how a second-grade student was able to take a loaded handgun to school and show it off to his classmates during recess, authorities said.
Kylie Vardiman, a second-grade student who was playing with her friends at recess, told St. Louis Fox affiliate KTVI that she was “shocked” when she saw a second-grade male classmate with the gun Friday afternoon.
“I just wish I had my phone so I could call my mom to tell her,” Kylie told the outlet. “It was like, ‘We don’t want to see that!’ We told somebody to go tell the teacher.”
George Sells, a spokesman for St. Louis Public Schools, told The Washington Post that a teacher “picking up on unusual behavior found the weapon and took action” to immediately secure the gun without anyone getting hurt.
But when police arrived, authorities concluded that no charges would be brought against the child’s family. Police said the boy found the gun “in a lock box under his parent’s bed” and had no intention of harming classmates and teachers.
“Due to the circumstances of the child finding the weapon in a presumed secured lock box, and the child’s intent to just show off the weapon, no criminal charges are being sought at this time,” Evita Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, told The Post in a statement. Police are investigating how the second-grade student got the gun out of a secured lock box.
The school district is also investigating the incident. It’s unclear whether the young student has been disciplined. Neither the boy nor his parents have been publicly identified.
Meanwhile, questions remain regarding the parents of Ethan Crumbley, the 15-year-old charged as an adult with fatally shooting four students and injuring several in Oxford, Mich.
Jennifer and James Crumbley were charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter. Prosecutors argue that Crumbley’s parents, who have pleaded not guilty on all counts, “could have stopped” the attack and that they gave their son “total access” to the weapon. Parents rarely face charges related to school shootings carried out by children using guns taken from their homes.
The high school shooting has reignited calls for tighter gun laws, with more states considering laws to punish parents if children fire unsecured guns. Laws restricting gun access are not always enforced, and the strength of legislation varies state-to-state, experts recently told The Post. The District of Columbia and 23 states have laws that hold gun owners accountable in keeping firearms away from minors.
Missouri has no law requiring gun owners to secure their weapons, according to Giffords Law Center, a gun-control nonprofit organization founded by former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords (D).
“Missouri gun laws are some of the weakest in the country,” says the gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.
On Friday about 1 p.m., police said, children were playing during recess when a second-grade male student showed off a loaded pistol on the playground at Pamoja Preparatory Academy, a few miles outside downtown St. Louis.
After Kylie and her classmates alerted adults and a teacher grabbed the gun, the district sent an email to parents informing them of the incident. The episode was concerning for Lakita Robinson, Kylie’s mother.
“I was scared because there are too many school shootings going on,” Robinson told KTVI, adding that she was worried about Kylie and a kindergartner who attends the school. “Especially with my kids being so young, if anything would’ve gone down, it was just so scary for me.”
Caldwell, the police spokeswoman, said officers were told that the student is “subject to [the] SLPS disciplinary process.” Sells, the SLPS spokesman, told The Post that the district could not comment on the disciplinary status of the second-grader.
“We can say that district guidelines are being followed, as they would be in any case,” he said.
The Missouri incident is not the only recent instance in the United States of an elementary school student taking a gun to school. In late October, a second-grade student in Chesapeake, Va., faced discipline after the child took a loaded gun to school, Portsmith, Va.-based WAVY TV reported. In Hampton, Va., a young boy was arrested and faces charges after he had a loaded gun in his backpack last month, according to the TV station.
Last week, a second-grade student in Lumberton, N.C., was suspended for a year after taking a loaded gun to school and showing it off at recess. The case was at least the fifth known incident since August in which a student with the Public Schools of Robeson County was found with a gun at school, reported Myrtle Beach, S.C., station WBTW.
Sells, of the St. Louis school district, urged families to secure firearms to avoid incidents such as the one at Pamoja Preparatory Academy.
“We are asking parents, guardians and caregivers to please check on any firearms in the home, secure them and store them out of reach of children,” Sells said in a statement. “The safety and security of our children and staff are top priorities in our District, and it must always be our shared responsibility as a school community.”
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