Cops kill armed 8th grader in Texas
BROWNSVILLE, Texas – Police say the weapon a Texas eighth-grader pointed at officers in a school hallway before they killed him was a pellet gun that looked like a real handgun.
In the Great State of Texas, NOT to have a gun makes you a pussy. This dead boy took that to heart-straight to his heart.
Interim Brownsville Police Chief Orlando Rodriguez says 15-year-old Jaime Gonzalez had “plenty of opportunities” to lower the weapon but “didn’t want to.”
Rodriguez says two officers fired three shots and struck Gonzalez at least twice.
Police are awaiting the results of an autopsy.
Police kill armed 8th-grader in Texas school
Rodriguez says that before the confrontation with police, Gonzalez walked into a Cummings Middle School classroom and punched another boy in the nose. He says he doesn’t know why Gonzalez brandished the weapon but that the initial call to police said a student had a gun.
Brownsville school district officials said administrators immediately called police after Gonzalez brandished a weapon about 8 a.m., shortly after classes started at Cummings Middle School. When police arrived, the student “engaged” the officers and was shot, district spokeswoman Drue Brown said in an emailed statement.
Cameron County Justice of the Peace Kip V. Johnson Hodge pronounced the student dead at a hospital and has ordered an autopsy, said court coordinator Israel Tapia.
The school, with an enrollment of about 750 students, was placed on lockdown when administrators called police and no one else was injured, Brown said.
A seventh grade student who said he was two classrooms from where the shooting took place said the school was already on lockdown when he heard three shots. Miguel Grimaldo, 12, said students later followed police out of the building and boarded buses that took them to a neighboring park, where his mother picked him up late Wednesday morning.
“For now they’re not saying anything, just pick up your kids,” said the boy’s mother, Maria Grimaldo.
The street in front of Cummings was lined with police cars and blocked off. About two hours after the shooting, dozens of frustrated parents and relatives flooded out of the park pavilion without their children after school officials announced that all remaining children had been bused to a high school and could be picked up there.
Daniel Lozano, the father of a 14-year-old eighth-grader, told CBS affiliate KENS that he and his wife closed up their small grocery and rushed to the school to find information. He expressed alarm that someone had been able to get a gun into the middle school.
“This is really messed up,” Lozano said. “I thought they had more security.”
The lockdown was lifted about two hours after the shooting, but the students and employees were relocated while officers investigated at the school, Brown said.
Brownsville is 280 miles south of San Antonio on the southern tip of Texas.
I’ve heard armchair psychologists all over the Web diagnose this situation: everything from “blame the parents” to quoting Charlton Heston to well he must have wanted to die. No one actually knows what happened, except that another 15 year old kid died the first week of 2012. I agree with New Age-I do not believe they had to kill Jamie Gonzalez. I heard from a friend who lives in Texas, and she told me she had never been afraid of the police until she moved there.
13 year old kids are not known for their common sense. The boy might have felt like it was a game, for all we know.
At this point I’ve read nothing about how close to the boy the police were, how exposed they were, or any other details. Could the police not have used a Taser? I’m not finger pointing; just asking. A tragedy for everyone involved.
This is truly a sad incident. What possessed this kid to do this is anyone’s guess but it almost seems like a suicide by cop. This is probably a police officer’s worst nightmare come true. Most all police officers hope they never have to take a life period, but this extends way beyond that. It really makes little difference to the officer that it was a “good shoot.” He, or she, will always remember that it was a kid.