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

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

ByThe Associated Press

18 May 2022, 23:06

• 2 min learn

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

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

During the listening to, prosecutors alleged that the lady's 8-year-old son found the gun underneath her mattress and took it to Walt Disney Magnet School on the town’s North Facet on Tuesday. The mom has a sound firearm homeowners identification card.

According to police, the backpack was within the boy's classroom when, just earlier than 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 kid's abdomen. The kid was taken to a hospital in good condition, police mentioned.

In an electronic mail to oldsters, the college's principal mentioned the bullet "prompted some debris to ricochet in your little one’s classroom, which hit a member of our faculty neighborhood and brought on minor scrapes.” The school didn't respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

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

The lady's attorney, Rodger Clarke, acknowledged that the gun should have been locked up and not simply positioned under the bed. But, he stated, “This wasn't one thing she deliberate or one thing she did on her own volition.”

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

“This may not have been an intentional act, however it is a supremely negligent act,” he mentioned.

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