
A photo of the pellet gun that was mistaken for a firearm.
Police in rural Brownsville, Texas, were forced to shoot an 8th grade student at Cummings Middle School yesterday. The student, 15-year-old Jaime Gonzalez, was carrying what looked to be a deadly weapon and refused to cooperate with officers brought to the school when staff noticed the weapon. As it turns out, the Texas 8th-grader was shot and killed over an air pistol or pellet gun that looked disturbingly real.
“The main thing is it’s unfortunate this type of thing happened today; we pray it doesn’t happen again, but we always have to assume that in the time we live today, by the border, that this is reality. We have to be ready,” said Superintendent said Carl Montoya of the Brownsville Independent School District. “We do have a campus-by-campus emergency plan, and we do visit it often. And we will revisit it again.”
I have no sympathy for this kid. Not only did he start this incident by assaulting another student, he brought the shooting on himself by pointing the weapon at cops. I have no doubt he did this deliberately, and was probably a troubled person looking to commit suicide by cop. It’s sad, but they have to protect themselves. From the look of the pellet gun, there’s no way they wouldn’t know it wasn’t a real weapon and had to act accordingly.
Tags: pellet gun, air pistol, Jaime Gonzalez, Brownsville, Texas, Cummings Middle School, police shoot 8th grader carrying pellet gun, police shoot 8th grader over air pistol, police shoot gun-carrying 8th grader, accidents, middle school student shot by police, Carl Montoya, Brownsville Independent School District