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Student killed by officers had pellet gun: He did not follow orders to set weapon down

I have hard feelings on this and they mirror Fred's whose article I am posting here.

A boy is dead because he made a couple of stupid decisions. He brought this weapon to school and he refused to follow police orders to set it down. This student was a threat to the entire school population but also a threat to the officers who responded to this call.

If you are so smart and are making arm chair decisions and what' you would have done' in a similar situation, leave us a comment and tell us your expertise and share your wisdom with us.

I know what I would have done and it would have been the same as these officers did.

Now a boy is dead, his family has to live this nightmare every day because of his stupidity. These officers now have the death of boy on their hands and they will be vilified by those that hate guns and the 2nd amendment. You don't think these officers will relive this every day of their lives?

My prayers go out to the officers and their families and to the family of the boy.


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Police: Student killed by officers had pellet gun
By TexasFred


Police: Student killed by officers had pellet gun

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) – An armed eight-grader gunned down by police officers in the hallway of his Texas middle school Wednesday was brandishing a pellet gun that looked like a firearm, and he refused repeated orders to lower the weapon before the officers opened fire, police said.

The carbon-dioxide powered pellet gun 15-year-old Jaime Gonzalez was holding looked like a handgun, and the initial report to police that sent officers rushing to Cummings Middle School Wednesday morning was for a student seen holding a gun, Orlando Rodriguez, Brownsville’s interim police chief, said at a news conference.

Robert Valle, a 13-year-old who was among the school’s 750 students locked down in their classrooms during the confrontation, said he heard police run down the hallway and yell “put the gun down,” before several shots were fired.

“He had plenty of opportunities to lower the weapon … and he didn’t want to,” Rodriguez said. Two officers fired three shots, striking Gonzalez at least twice, he said. The autopsy results are pending.

Full Story Here:

OK, use your imagination on this one; YOU are a police officer, the dispatcher put the call out as ‘a person with a gun’, it’s a middle school and there are God only knows how many kids in danger. You see the individual with the gun and he has it pointed, more or less at YOU! You order this individual to drop the gun and put their hands in the air but they ignore you and move the gun to a position that indicates to YOU that they are about to fire that gun at YOU!

Look QUICKLY, I mean look very QUICKLY! Is that a REAL gun? Are you in a deadly situation that dictates immediate deadly force be used? You have less than a second to decide whether YOU go home to your family that night or do you take a shot, or several shots from some dipstick with a gun!

Shots fired, officer involved shooting, we need backup dispatch, NOW!

Well, in this case, it’s a Co2 gun, a replica, a pellet gun that looks so much like the real thing that even highly experienced officers can’t tell the difference, and a kid just died because he was STUPID! And now these cops have to live the rest of their lives knowing that they killed a 13 year old kid.

Some may call this a COLD statement to make, but those people never carried a gun for a living, I feel nothing for this 13 year old kid, he made his decision, he had options, he chose to ignore LAWFUL orders to drop the gun and put his hands up, he threatened the lives of police officers and he paid the price for his actions.

My most sincere sympathies go to the officers that were FORCED to pull the trigger and end that young life. They were placed in a position that left them with no choice but to act in the exact manner in which they were trained.

These officers did their job, and did it correctly, I wish them well and I hope that there are no lingering issues for them, a conscience can be a terrible thing to have.

P.S. That Colt 1911 in the picture is an *air gun*, a pellet gun.

If you didn’t know you’d never spot the difference in a *real life* situation and officers have died because they hesitated to act quickly enough, thankfully, today that didn’t happen and the Thin Blue Line didn’t get any thinner.

In the immortal words of Sgt. Phil Esterhaus of Hill Street Blues fame, “Be careful out there!”

The complete, original article is here.


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4 Comments - Share Yours!:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the re-post!

PatriotUSA said...

My pleasure Fred!!

We pretty much think alike and you are one of the best when it come to supporting our fine officers who put their lives on the line ever day, all across our country.

You know some fine folks and I appreciate their views and wisdom. Many of them having walked the streets themselves or working to keep our borders safe.

Again, thank you for letting me steal this one!!

Nick said...

Post-Columbine, anyone responding to a school/gun situation is going to have the names "Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold" flashing through their mind en route to the scene. Makes decisions on the ground that much tougher, knowing just how bad a situation like that could be - & you have the responsibility of making sure things don't get that bad right here, right now ... talk about added pressure.

Zenster said...

My most sincere sympathies go to the officers that were FORCED to pull the trigger and end that young life. They were placed in a position that left them with no choice but to act in the exact manner in which they were trained.

Thank goodness they were so well trained.

These officers did their job, and did it correctly, I wish them well and I hope that there are no lingering issues for them, a conscience can be a terrible thing to have.

If these officers have functioning consciences, then they will have no regrets. The kid was old enough to know that what he was doing was wrong. He was also old enough to know the difference between the pellet gun he had and what the police were pointing at him. By his age, he had watched countless thousands of simulated shootings on television and knew damn well that even one round from a police officer's gun could end his life.

What would have justifiably tormented the officers was if this child had capped one of the responders or another kid before they could disarm him. A pellet gun can blind someone quite nicely, so any distinction between it and a real pistol are superfluous.

This child's parents are the one's who must torment themselves. Were they actually so incredibly stupid as to give their child a simulated firearm so lifelike that it could fool even trained responders?

Or were they merely stupid enough to own such a weapon and not secure it adequately enough to prevent their child from absconding with it?

Also, were they so negligent as to not discuss with their child what school "zero tolerance" policies are all about? We won't even go into the absolute need for any gun owner to understand basic safety practices when possessing a weapon.

Furthermore, with so many "zero tolerance" policies in place at schools across the country, this kid knew damn well that bringing any sort of gun on campus, pellet or otherwise, was the most serious breach of rules imaginable.

What remains to be seen is if this was the child's response to being bullied. That is one of the very few, if not the only, possible mitigating circumstance in this situation.

If this kid was a bully, then good riddance!