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Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009

More charges added in Howard gun case

While the mother of the 15-year-old girl charged with bringing a gun to Howard High School says it was out of self-defense, school officials said Friday it was more about a relationship gone sour.

“It was more about a boy and a girl,” Superintendent Sharon Patterson said Friday after the mother told reporters a slightly different story earlier in the day outside Bibb County Juvenile Court.

The mother said her 15-year-old daughter took a .38-caliber revolver to school Thursday after being threatened and struck in the head by a football player the day before. The gun — loaded with five rounds — was hidden in a 14-year-old student’s locker. It was never fired.

The girls are now charged with possession of a weapon on school grounds, possession of a pistol by a minor, participation in criminal gang activity and disrupting a public school, prosecutor Mike Smith said after Friday’s hearing.

Both girls are suspended from school awaiting an evidentiary hearing.

A school system campus police report released late Friday afternoon redacted the 15-year-old’s possible motivation, but Patterson said there was more to the story than simple self-defense.

“It’s a rabbit trail you have to go check. ... It spreads out like roots on a tree. One interview leads to another,” she said.

Just as school was about to begin at Howard on Thursday, a student tipped off a teacher about a gun in the school. The school was placed on lockdown for several hours beginning about 7:45 a.m.

The 15-year-old had hid the gun, wrapped in a cloth, between two books in the 14-year-old’s locker. The 14-year-old was also charged with bringing a gun to school.

Gang-related scribbling for “Dem Northside Chicks” was also found written on a notebook sheet inside the girl’s locker, but the campus police report said the incident was not motivated by anything gang related.

According to the report, the 15-year-old’s mother told authorities that the family found the gun in their attic when they moved into their home.

The mother said she kept the gun for protection.

Thursday morning, the 15-year-old said she thought of the gun as she was tying a shoe getting ready for school, and she decided to get it and bring it to school, according to the report.

The girl never gave her mother any indication she would take the weapon to school, the mother said.

“She shouldn’t have made that decision on her own,” she said after Friday’s court hearing.

Patterson said if students ever feel bullied, threatened or upset, they can always tell a teacher or a school administrator. Bringing a gun to school is never the answer, she said.

“(A student) reacts and is impulsive and doesn’t think beyond that moment. Then they’re in a situation bigger than anticipated,” Patterson said.

Smith said both girls were released into their parents’ custody after the hearing on orders that they stay at home.

If they are convicted, they face a maximum penalty of five years in a youth detention center, Smith said.

School officials said 28 students left early Thursday from Howard High after the incident, but classes resumed as normal later that day and Friday.

“The school fielded a few calls from parents, and there were some central office support staff on campus,” said Chris Floore, the Bibb County school system spokesman.

To contact writer Julie Hubbard, call 744-4331. To contact writer Amy Leigh Womack, call 744-4398.