Gun in 8-year-old’s backpack goes off at school, mom 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 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 child endangerment after a gun in her second grader's backpack by accident discharged at college, injuring a 7-year-old classmate, police said Wednesday.

The 28-year-old woman appeared in courtroom on Wednesday on three misdemeanor little one endangerment counts. A choose ordered her release from Prepare dinner County Jail on $1,000 bond.

Through the hearing, prosecutors alleged that the lady's 8-year-old son found the gun beneath her bed and took it to Walt Disney Magnet Faculty on the city’s North Aspect on Tuesday. The mother has a sound firearm house owners identification card.

In accordance with police, the backpack was in the boy's classroom when, simply before 10 a.m. on Tuesday, the gun discharged. The Chicago Sun-Occasions reported that prosecutors said during the hearing that the bullet ricocheted off the ground and grazed the kid's stomach. The child was taken to a hospital in good condition, police stated.

In an email to parents, the varsity's principal stated the bullet "prompted some particles to ricochet in your youngster’s classroom, which hit a member of our college community and brought on minor scrapes.” The school didn't reply to a request for touch upon Wednesday.

A teacher then grabbed the backpack and gave it to security officers who discovered a Glock 19 handgun inside, prosecutors said in the course of the hearing.

The girl's lawyer, Rodger Clarke, acknowledged that the gun ought to have been locked up and never simply positioned beneath the bed. But, he mentioned, “This wasn't one thing she deliberate or one thing she did on her personal volition.”

Cook dinner County Choose Michael Hogan was not impressed by that argument.

“This may increasingly not have been an intentional act, however it is a supremely negligent act,” he stated.

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