Gun in 8-year-old’s backpack goes off in school, mother charged

Chicago police say a mother has been charged with little one endangerment after a gun in her second grader’s backpack by chance discharged at college, injuring a 7-year-old classmate

ByThe Related Press

18 May 2022, 23:06

• 2 min learn

CHICAGO -- A Chicago mother has been charged with youngster endangerment after a gun in her second grader's backpack by accident discharged in school, injuring a 7-year-old classmate, police stated Wednesday.

The 28-year-old woman appeared in court docket on Wednesday on three misdemeanor little one endangerment counts. A decide ordered her release from Cook County Jail on $1,000 bond.

During the listening to, prosecutors alleged that the woman's 8-year-old son discovered the gun underneath her bed and took it to Walt Disney Magnet College on the city’s North Aspect on Tuesday. The mom has a sound firearm homeowners identification card.

In keeping with police, the backpack was in the boy's classroom when, simply before 10 a.m. on Tuesday, the gun discharged. The Chicago Solar-Times reported that prosecutors said in the course of the listening to that the bullet ricocheted off the floor and grazed the kid's abdomen. The kid was taken to a hospital in good condition, police said.

In an email to oldsters, the school's principal mentioned the bullet "triggered some debris to ricochet in your child’s classroom, which hit a member of our college group and induced minor scrapes.” The college didn't reply to a request for touch upon Wednesday.

A instructor then grabbed the backpack and gave it to safety officers who discovered a Glock 19 handgun inside, prosecutors stated during the hearing.

The lady's attorney, Rodger Clarke, acknowledged that the gun ought to have been locked up and never just placed beneath the bed. But, he said, “This wasn't something she deliberate or something she did on her own volition.”

Cook County Decide Michael Hogan was not impressed by that argument.

“This will not have been an intentional act, but it is a supremely negligent act,” he said.

He continued: “We are inches away, probably centimeters away, from a really different case and a very totally different tragedy.”