Sumter County (WLTX) -- Two 14-year-olds were taken into custody for having a handgun at their middle school, and now parents are reeling after the district didn't notify them about the incident.
When Julie Rushford went to pick her daughter up from school Thursday, the conversation between the two was hardly about homework.
"It's horrible," she said. "I mean, all you think about it all the other schools that people's brought guns to school and killed these other kids."
Thankfully, that didn't happen at Furman Middle School but she realizes that it could've Wednesday. "It kinda makes you think twice about sending your kids here," Rushford said. "You know? And this is supposed to be one of the better middle schools in the city and they don't even let you know when something bad happens."
While she planned to take that matter up with the district, Rushford's 14-year-old daughter filled her in on what investigators said happened between two of her classmates.
"One of the students brought the gun to school," said Sheriff Anthony Dennis. "He said he had been threatened by four males who we believe are gang members and that he brought the gun to school for protection."
He said the eighth grader didn't have a bookbag so he asked a friend to put the gun and a full clip in his, and that's when the second student started to feel uncomfortable and turned the clip over to a teacher's aid, who later found the gun in the bag. Consequently, the two students were taken into custody.
"Anytime you remove a weapon from a school, you always look into what could've happened if we had not removed that weapon," the sheriff said.
He added that the teen got the gun from home and an investigation revealed that it had been reported stolen from another jurisdiction.
Rushford believes that's the sign of a serious problem with the child's parents.
"I tell [my daughter] all the time, you should go tell someone when someone's messing with you...and you would think other parents would teach their children the same thing," she added.
Sumter School District Two told News19 that the students are suspended pending the outcome of an expulsion hearing, and that a letter was not sent home to parents because school officials never felt anyone was in danger.
Sheriff Dennis explained that there is no school resource officer at Furman because of a lack of funding, and he adds that investigators have found that both kids have ties to gangs.
News19 also spoke with the mother of the boy who deputies said brought the gun to school. She admitted that her new job had taken her out of the home so often that she had lost track of who her son had been hanging out with.
4/3/2008 10:01:11 PM
