CHICAGO (AP) – A mother from Chicago has been accused of endangering a child after a gun in the backpack of her second-grader was accidentally dropped at school, injuring a 7-year-old classmate, police said on Wednesday.
The 28-year-old woman appeared in court on Wednesday on three charges of threatening children. A judge ordered her release from Cook County Jail on $ 1,000 bail.
During the hearing, prosecutors said the woman’s 8-year-old son found the gun under her bed and took it to Walt Disney’s Magnet School in the northern part of the city on Tuesday. The mother has a valid ID card of the owner of the firearm.
According to police, the backpack was in the boy’s classroom when the gun fired shortly before 10 a.m. Tuesday. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that during the hearing, prosecutors said the bullet ricocheted off the floor and destroyed the child’s abdomen. The child was taken to hospital in good condition, police said.
In an email to parents, the school principal said the bullet “ricocheted off some debris in your child’s classroom, hitting a member of our school community and causing minor abrasions.” The school did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
A teacher then grabbed the backpack and handed it to security officers who found a Glock 19 pistol inside, prosecutors said during the hearing.
The woman’s lawyer, Roger Clark, admitted that the gun should have been locked, not just under the bed. But he said: “It was not something she planned or something she did of her own free will.
Cook County Judge Michael Hogan was not impressed by this argument.
“It may not have been a deliberate act, but it is extremely careless,” he said.
He continued: “We are inches, probably inches, from a completely different case and a very different tragedy.
Add Comment