Gun in 8-year-old’s backpack goes off at college, 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 school, injuring a 7-year-old classmate

ByThe Related Press

18 Could 2022, 23:06

• 2 min read

CHICAGO -- A Chicago mother has been charged with baby endangerment after a gun in her second grader's backpack accidentally discharged at college, injuring a 7-year-old classmate, police said Wednesday.

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

During the listening to, prosecutors alleged that the woman's 8-year-old son found the gun beneath her bed and took it to Walt Disney Magnet School on the city’s North Facet on Tuesday. The mother has a sound firearm homeowners identification card.

In line with police, the backpack was within 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 hearing that the bullet ricocheted off the floor and grazed the child's abdomen. The child was taken to a hospital in good situation, police mentioned.

In an e mail to parents, the college's principal mentioned the bullet "precipitated some particles to ricochet in your baby’s classroom, which hit a member of our college community and brought about minor scrapes.” The school didn't reply to a request for touch upon Wednesday.

A instructor then grabbed the backpack and gave it to safety officers who found a Glock 19 handgun inside, prosecutors mentioned in the course of the listening to.

The lady's lawyer, Rodger Clarke, acknowledged that the gun should have been locked up and not just placed below the bed. But, he said, “This wasn't one thing she planned or something she did on her own volition.”

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

“This will likely 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 completely different case and a really totally different tragedy.”