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

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

ByThe Related Press

18 May 2022, 23:06

• 2 min read

CHICAGO -- A Chicago mom has been charged with youngster endangerment after a gun in her second grader's backpack by chance discharged at college, injuring a 7-year-old classmate, police mentioned Wednesday.

The 28-year-old girl appeared in court docket on Wednesday on three misdemeanor baby endangerment counts. A choose ordered her release from Cook dinner County Jail on $1,000 bond.

During the listening to, prosecutors alleged that the woman's 8-year-old son discovered the gun beneath her mattress and took it to Walt Disney Magnet College on the town’s North Facet on Tuesday. The mom has a legitimate firearm homeowners identification card.

In line with police, the backpack was within the boy's classroom when, just before 10 a.m. on Tuesday, the gun discharged. The Chicago Sun-Occasions reported that prosecutors mentioned 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 mentioned.

In an e-mail to oldsters, the school's principal stated the bullet "precipitated some particles to ricochet in your youngster’s classroom, which hit a member of our faculty neighborhood and triggered minor scrapes.” The college did not reply to a request for comment on Wednesday.

A instructor then grabbed the backpack and gave it to security officers who discovered a Glock 19 handgun inside, prosecutors said throughout the hearing.

The girl's lawyer, Rodger Clarke, acknowledged that the gun ought to have been locked up and not just placed beneath the mattress. But, he stated, “This wasn't something she planned or something she did on her own volition.”

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

“This may occasionally not have been an intentional act, but it is a supremely negligent act,” he mentioned.

He continued: “We are inches away, possibly centimeters away, from a very completely different case and a very completely different tragedy.”