Posted on 01/15/2006 1:51:35 PM PST by wagglebee
The gun was not fake.
This was a big lose-lose for everyone. If the gun had been real the wife or family of the dead policeman would be outraged. If you point what looks like a real gun to a policeman you might as well climb into a lion cage with raw meat tied around your neck.
If he were my child, I'd certainly be questioning my parenting skills.
From an earlier post of mine:
Not to mention the fact that a few weeks ago where I live, a woman and her father got into a domestic dispute. When she threatened the life of her father (I think she had a knife or something; I can't remember her weapon), her 14 year old son shot her with a pellet gun.
The pellet pierced her heart, and she died.
As an armed security officer, I would have done exactly the same thing as the LEO.
Actually, if I remember the story correctly, the kid was told to get into a closet, then the kid went to a totally different part of the school IIRC.
Good point. It was Brandon something (a kid of a martial arts master).
Pellet guns kill, too. How'd you like to get shot in the eye or the brain at close range with a pellet gun? Some of that ammo can do some real damage and it's meant to.
Me too.
Something doesn't smell right.
The kid took hostages but didn't shoot anybody.
One of Penley's classmates said he, too, thought the gun was real -- and that Penley was going to kill him -- until he grabbed the pistol and realized it was fake.
"He started to point the gun at me, so I started to grab for it and he pulled it away," Cotey told WKMG. "And then I grabbed for it one more time 'cause he pointed it at me for like a little while, so I grabbed it and I twisted it and I pointed it at him."
It was then that Cotey knew for sure the gun was a fake.
"While I was twisting it, it started to come apart like a toy gun would, like a dollar-store type toy," he said.
Cotey pointed the gun toward Penley's legs, but Penley kicked him into the closet, the 13-year-old said.
Cotey was able to get out of the closet and run out of the classroom. Penley already had gone and was running from a school resource deputy and others who were chasing him, Eslinger said.
Did Cotey also tell the police the gun was such a flimsy fake it was breaking apart?
Penley fled to an isolated alcove area and went into a restroom where he refused to speak with negotiators, the sheriff said.
Authorities pleaded with the boy inside the bathroom to put down his weapon, Eslinger said, but the boy refused.
Was Penley trapped and contained in the bathroom?
Yeah, I'd like to know a few more facts before calling this shooting justified.
BB guns come with warning labels on the boxes: Warning: This is Not a Toy. It is a Potentially Lethal Weapon.
"I should've had that DNA test."
If it were my child and he had these problems, he would not be in school, much less with a pellet gun!
I would have him seeing a doctor or resting in a hospital!
One has to ask, if the Dad KNEW it was a pellet gun, why did he allow the kid to take it to school?
It sounded like a suicide-by-cop and the cops were only too eager to oblige.
When Ralph Penley arrived at the school Friday to help police and school officials defuse the situation, he wasn't allowed inside, Nation said.
Nation said Ralph Penley was "angry" because he had spoken to police before he arrived at the school and told them Christopher did not have a real gun. Christopher's younger brother told school officials the same thing, Nation said.
Maybe they didn't get up in the morning looking for a kid to shoot, but they didn't exactly try to save his life, either.
The kid who shot a bunch of people in my school was 14. Old enough to kill, old enough to be killed.
Exactly.
He is not being sarcastic.
Murder? LOL In what galaxy?
I have real guns that don't look that real.
Well, having had to bury my eighth-grade son ( as a result of an accident), and knowing how devastating that is, I'd say it's not quite that simple.
Before a police officer shoots a kid in the head, he ought to exhaust every other possibility.
It's not like the kid had been shooting others in the school.
The kid was cornered in the bathroom and could have been shot by police ANYTIME, at their convenience... later rather than sooner.
If the cops were told the kid did not have a real gun, knew he was cornered in a bathroom and they knew the kid hadn't shot anyone, they could have simply waited for the kid to get tired of a stand-off.
Where is the kid going after being surrounded by a SWAT team?
I hate to say it but this doesn't sound like very good police judgment when it comes to the use of deadly force.
Looks pretty real to me. I doubt if I'd bet my life it wasn't.
Only Officer Kreskin
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