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

Chicago police say a mother has been charged with baby endangerment after a gun in her second grader’s backpack by chance discharged at college, injuring a 7-year-old classmate

ByThe Associated Press

18 May 2022, 23:06

• 2 min read

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

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

In the course of the hearing, prosecutors alleged that the girl's 8-year-old son discovered the gun beneath her bed and took it to Walt Disney Magnet College on the city’s North Aspect on Tuesday. The mother has a valid firearm owners 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 Solar-Instances reported that prosecutors said during the listening to that the bullet ricocheted off the ground and grazed the kid's abdomen. The kid was taken to a hospital in good situation, police stated.

In an e mail to parents, the college's principal stated the bullet "brought about some particles to ricochet in your baby’s classroom, which hit a member of our school group and induced minor scrapes.” The varsity didn't reply to a request for comment on Wednesday.

A instructor then grabbed the backpack and gave it to safety officers who discovered a Glock 19 handgun inside, prosecutors stated during the hearing.

The woman's lawyer, Rodger Clarke, acknowledged that the gun ought to have been locked up and never just positioned underneath the mattress. But, he said, “This wasn't one thing she deliberate or something she did on her own 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 mentioned.

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