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

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

ByThe Associated Press

18 May 2022, 23:06

• 2 min learn

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

The 28-year-old woman appeared in court docket on Wednesday on three misdemeanor baby endangerment counts. A decide ordered her launch from Cook County Jail on $1,000 bond.

Throughout the hearing, prosecutors alleged that the woman's 8-year-old son found the gun underneath her bed and took it to Walt Disney Magnet School on the city’s North Side on Tuesday. The mom has a sound firearm owners identification card.

In accordance with police, the backpack was within the boy's classroom when, simply before 10 a.m. on Tuesday, the gun discharged. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that prosecutors mentioned throughout the listening to that the bullet ricocheted off the floor and grazed the child's abdomen. The kid was taken to a hospital in good situation, police stated.

In an email to oldsters, the college's principal mentioned the bullet "brought about some particles to ricochet in your youngster’s classroom, which hit a member of our school neighborhood and induced minor scrapes.” The school 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 listening to.

The lady's lawyer, Rodger Clarke, acknowledged that the gun ought to have been locked up and not just positioned below the mattress. However, he said, “This wasn't one thing she deliberate or one thing she did on her own volition.”

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

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

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