Seminole County SWAT and Sheriff Competence

[Updates below.]

The AP via the Tucson Citizen: Gun-wielding middle school student shot by SWAT team

A suicidal eighth grader who pulled a handgun in class and briefly took another child hostage was shot by a SWAT team member today when he later threatened deputies, Seminole County officials said.

Sheriff Don Eslinger said the 15-year-old boy brought the gun to Milwee Middle School in his backpack and briefly took a fellow student hostage during a classroom scuffle.

The student then ran from the classroom and was pursued by deputies into a restroom and isolated there, Eslinger said. The school was evacuated, and no one else was injured. Officials with the sheriff's office said they had not confirmed whether the gun the boy had was real or a toy.

Ignoring the meat of the story, re-read that last sentence. Perhaps something was lost in communication to the news service, but if law enforcement cannot within single-digit minutes confirm whether an object that looks like a firearm is an actual handgun or a toy, then those law enforcement officers are utterly incompetent. The threat of harm caused by a gun is the primary reason they are there, so isolating and confiscating the gun-like object ought to be on the top five list of Do It Right Now priorities in the moments after taking action.

Identifying it as a real gun should take anyone familiar with firearms less than a minute. Weight, materials of fabrication, presence of ammunition, a functioning hammer and action...these are the sort of things that can be checked and verified right there on the spot. Unless someone thought it would be best for the media to not get all the information or unless the info had just not been passed to the public relations staff, I don't any justification for not knowing and confirming whether the object was a real handgun or just a toy.

UPDATED 1/14/2006 8:41pm
Christopher Penley has died.

A reportedly suicidal teenager who was shot by police while brandishing a pellet gun in his middle school has died of his injuries, his family's spokeswoman said Saturday.

Kelly Swofford, a neighbor who had been with the family all morning, stood outside their home and confirmed that 15-year-old Christopher Penley had died.

"They want to donate his organs because that is what Chris would want," Swofford said. "The family is devastated, just devastated."

Penley, of Winter Springs, was accused of pulling the pellet gun in a classroom Friday and pointing it at other students before forcing one into a closet, then leading deputies and SWAT team members on a chase that ended in a school bathroom.

When he raised the gun at a deputy, a SWAT team member shot him, authorities said.

Officers who had responded to the 1,100-student school in suburban Orlando believed the gun was a Beretta 9mm, and didn't learn until after the shooting that it was a pellet gun.

[...]

At a news conference following the shooting Friday at suburban Orlando's Milwee Middle School, authorities put the pellet gun side-by-side with a Beretta. It appeared to have black paint covering the red or pink markings on the muzzle that may have indicated to officers that it was a nonlethal weapon.

"As you can see, it doesn't take a professional to see how close this looks to the real thing. I would not be able to tell the difference," said Joyce Dawley, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement special agent in charge of the investigation.

Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All right reserved.

There's the pellet gun ( WXIA-TV Atlanta)

Expect calls to be made to tighten the regulations on toy guns. What a tragic, crappy mess.

Posted by Drizzten at January 13, 2006 12:31 PM