A sixth-grader in Utah was taken into police custody after he brought a handgun to school and allegedly pointed it at classmates.
He supposedly packed heat to protect himself in case of a Sandy Hook-style shooting, and he said his parents gave him the gun.
Classmate Isabel Rios told KSL the boy pointed it at her friend’s head:
I told him I was going to tell, but he said, ‘If you tell, I’m going to kill you.’
The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the 11-year-old student brought a .22-caliber handgun to West Kearns Elementary School in his backpack. Though the boy had ammunition, it is unknown if the gun was loaded or if the bullets were the right size for the gun, says the school district spokesman Ben Horsley. It is also currently unclear how the boy got the gun.
Witnesses say they saw the boy with the gun on the playground. Two of the boy’s classmates told their teacher about the gun 45 minutes before the end of the school day. He was taken to the principal, who got the boy’s backpack and contacted the police.
Fox News is reporting that parents are enraged that there was no lockdown in the school and that they only heard about it from their children. Police are investigating whether the boy’s parents indeed had any role in the incident.