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

Chicago police say a mother has been charged with child endangerment after a gun in her second grader’s backpack accidentally discharged in school, injuring a 7-year-old classmate

ByThe Related Press

18 Could 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 accidentally discharged in school, injuring a 7-year-old classmate, police stated Wednesday.

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

During the hearing, prosecutors alleged that the lady's 8-year-old son found the gun underneath her mattress and took it to Walt Disney Magnet College on town’s North Side on Tuesday. The mom has a valid firearm house owners identification card.

According to 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 said throughout the listening to that the bullet ricocheted off the floor and grazed the child's abdomen. The child was taken to a hospital in good situation, police stated.

In an email to parents, the school's principal said the bullet "brought about some particles to ricochet in your baby’s classroom, which hit a member of our school neighborhood and prompted minor scrapes.” The school did not respond 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 in the course of the hearing.

The woman's lawyer, Rodger Clarke, acknowledged that the gun should have been locked up and not simply positioned under the mattress. But, he said, “This wasn't something she planned or one thing she did on her personal volition.”

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

“This may not have been an intentional act, but it's a supremely negligent act,” he stated.

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