Police shoot an "armed" middle school student

[Quaidis]

People are blowing this out of proportion. Let me rephrase the entire article:

"Police shoot teenager after a stand off at a school. Teenager suspected of attempting a school shooting after assaulting a classmate and acting strange. Three shots were fired between two officers, after repeatedly asking the student to lay down his firearm. Student instead aims at police and claims he will kill everyone."


Half the world appears to be sad about the student, but it's only because the words are stilted in his direction. He had a 'toy' gun, he's a 'kid', police used 'deadly force' on a 'kid' with a 'toy gun'. If you look at it clearly, realize this student isn't five years old playing cowboy and indian in the backyard, or begging the cops for mercy with a neon-green plastic water-shooting pistol, you would realize that this situation was probably far more serious and that the cops did what they had to to stop the kid and protect themselves as well as the school.

 

[nackertash]

A good third of the questions people are asking could be answered by just skimming the article.

Snip

He could easily have modified it to take the cap off. Or it could have just looked real. Plenty of pictures, not all of them are neon.

I'm just going to say how i feel on this one so don't bother hating.
Your country makes me fucking sick that you can be justified in killing a child who had what is essentially a toy, and it makes me sicker that some of you think that's just alright. Fuck you

Oh I'm gonna bother hating. How the fuck were the cops supposed to know it was a toy if it looked real, and he was POINTING IT AT THEM.

Pop quiz Mr. Calm-in-a-life-or-death-situation. Someone is waving a gun at you. It looks real, and if it ends up being real and you hesitate, he could kill you, your fellow policeman, and then possibly dozens of kids and students. You have no way to tell. You have already told him to put the gun down, and he refused. You now have less than a second to decide. What do you do?

By the way, the argument that it would never happen in Ireland is all fine and dandy until it does. So for the sake of children who could end up in a situation like that, I'm glad that you're not the person protecting them.

I think everyone here knows exactly where you can shove that "fuck you."

More importantly, my condolences go out to the cops that have to live with making that decision no matter how justified, and the parents once they come to terms with the fact that their son got himself into that situation.

The cop did his best in a bad situation. I am saying that your country sickens me that you have made it easy to replicate and popularized them.

 

[RevRaptor]

Try to think for a moment what it must have been like for the officers, the kid had a gun that might be real, they can't take the chance that it's not real. If they assume its a toy a do nothing people might die they might get shot themselves they have to treat it as if its a real gun even if it even looks remotely like a real weapon. Yes its a shitty call to have to make but its the right thing to do in the situation. The world is not nice nor is it clean cut.

 

[Sovvolf]

1. I don't live in the North, I'm Irish, not English and stop assuming I am.
2. Your argument is invalidated by its absurdity
3. I wouldn't have been able to shoot the child due to my clearly bizarre sense of morality. Which would of led to the kid still being alive considering the circumstances.

1: Exactly that, you said you was Irish, you failed to specify where. Though looking at the laws on fire arms in the South its not far off the same as the rest of the UK scratching out N.I. You can still get a hold of small bore pistols and pellet rifles legally.

2. Yeah, my argument is absurd due to me thinking that a 15 year old being found wielding what appeared to be a gun and going irate would be let off by police as just some kid... Yeah... Sure. Instead your perfectly reasonable of "A kid could never get one so police wouldn't bother" is that one that isn't absurd... What planet you from? They'd check him and treat him like anyone else under suspicion of carrying a firearm. If he aimed it at a police officer, he'd be shot dead. If he dropped it, and got arrested, he'd serve around 5 years in jail.

3. Or, if you was wrong and it turned out the kid was weilding a gun... You, your partner and say a good couple students would be dead. I wouldn't have wanted to shoot a kid neither, do you think the cop did? I imagine that cops going to probably have a lot of trouble sleeping after having to do that, specially after finding out that it was a pellet gun. However, if put in that situation where you either take him out or risk the lives of yourself, your fellow officers and the school students... You've got to take him out.

Your saying the officer is morally in the wrong because he decided to shoot a teen in order to prevent him from going on a massacre?.

 

[SmegInThePants]

if i was a cop and i genuinely thought someone had a gun and genuinely thought they were intending to shoot me w/it, i wouldn't hesitate to shoot.

if i was a cop and i genuinely thought an 8th grader had a gun but i wasn't sure they intended to use it, and there were no innocent bystanders around, i'd take the risk and try to talk them down. So i would act differently w/a kid. And i'd be more likely to assume that maybe they are confused, overwhelmed, and slow to react to what i'm telling them.

That being said, if there were innocent bystanders around, other kids, then my first concern would be for them, not the kid w/the gun.

And if i were a cop and i were called to a possible gun situation in a school, not only would i bring guns w/me, in case its a Columbine level situation, i would also bring a taser, in case it was a situation more like this: so that i'd have more than one choice in how to respond when things got intense. I'd even buy my own taser to keep w/me for such situations if the state wouldn't provide me one.

edit: schools can do their part too. Maybe if some adult more familiar w/this kid approached him instead of running away in fear, they may have been able to defuse the situation before it got out of hand. It would seem from some of the quotations that there were many who thought highly of him, so where were they? And kids should be taught that when dealing w/the police, always do what they say w/out hesitation, if you disagree w/what they say, the time for airing that disagreement is after the fact in the court room, not on the spot w/their guns in your face.

edit the second: I just remembered. Just to illustrate how times have changed i guess. Way back in the day when i was in high school i had brought a toy gun to school. This was ages before Columbine and such, so there was no real fear of guns in schools yet. And this toy gun was bright yellow and shot bright red plastic discs. So no one would mistake it for a real gun. Some teacher saw some of us shooting each other w/these toy guns in a crowded hallway between classes, took the guns from us, and that was it, never heard another word on the matter. No one even considered taking it seriously. It was just another contraband seizure. Simple. If instead this teacher had run away to hide and call the police and the police showed up while me and my friends were still goofing off (and our toy guns weren't bright yellow) then who knows what could have happened.

 

[DoomyMcDoom]

Another story, that again tells us if you do stupid things, bad things can and will happen to you, now when police tell you to put down your weapon, (and if it was a gas operated pellet gun, we aren't talking about an airsoft gun here, those fire shaped lead pellets that can cause lethal damage/blood poisoning if you shoot someone in the right spots with it, it is a weapon not a toy.) you should bloody well do it, otherwise they have to do whatever they can to reduce the chances of collateral damage or fatalities of unarmed bystanders, or themselves.

Sounds to me like that kid really really wanted to die, and at the age of 15, you're old enough to be expected to know things like, "don't point weapons at police officers", just saying, don't blame the cops, blame the kid, or the kid's parents for not raising him with a better understanding of how the world works.

 

[Ziadaine_v1legacy]

Real life isn't like a video game or movie. Guns work differently.

I used to be in the Army (before I took an arrow to the knee)as a Rifleman, I know all about gun power, speed, accuracy, chance of hit etc.

And holy crap some people quoting go overboard here assuming we're basing facts from movies or games, there is such a thing as a warning shot, yes a bullet has to go somewhere, but I think shooting into the floor near him, ON THE BOTTOM LEVEL FLOOR MADE OF CONCRETE, by physic laws and the material, its not going to magically bounce up and hit someone. THAT is watching too many movies. :|

This is why I avoid Off-Topic these days, people go way overboard with discussion as if we're in parliament.

 

[Sovvolf]

Real life isn't like a video game or movie. Guns work differently.

I used to be in the Army (before I took an arrow to the knee)as a Rifleman, I know all about gun power, speed, accuracy, chance of hit etc.

And holy crap some people quoting go overboard here assuming we're basing facts from movies or games, there is such a thing as a warning shot, yes a bullet has to go somewhere, but I think shooting into the floor near him, ON THE BOTTOM LEVEL FLOOR MADE OF CONCRETE, by physic laws and the material, its not going to magically bounce up and hit someone. THAT is watching too many movies. :|

This is why I avoid Off-Topic these days, people go way overboard with discussion as if we're in parliament.

If you've served as a riflemen then you should know how difficult it would be to hit a target such as the legs with something like a pistol.

Having shot at an hard surface with something as small as a pellet I can tell you that even those things coming out of only a pellet pistol can go all over the place before stopping. Can't imagine how dangerous it would be if a 9mm bullet hit an hard surface when from your average pistol.

Also, I haven't seen many movies outside of maybe Robocop and Alien 4 where bullets actually ricoche, movies tend to avoid that fact.

That and a warning shot may frighten the shooter... Which probably isn't a very good idea when they're wielding what appears to be a gun.

 

[Starke]

snip

Hell my pellet gun looks like this:

Spoiler: Hand Cannon

They can look like the silly toy ones you've shown however you can get some that look very really. All those images are of real pellet guns.

I'm sure its a law in some places to where you have to keep the cap on, or the cap is permanently attached and ETC. Thats, once again, some places.

If we're doing a "this is my gun thread", here's a pellet pistol I picked up back in '99 or so:

Spoiler: M9

Funny thing, the lack of orange is because it actually predates the laws requiring orange caps.

Spoiler: Sigma 40F

This one didn't predate the orange cap laws, but, the first time I released the slide, it sent the cap flying off never to be seen again. But, how can you recognize that that's not a live weapon? (For reference you can find some images of the Sigma SW40F here [http://world.guns.ru/handguns/hg/usa/sw-sigma-e.html].)

The point is, highly realistic airsoft pistols were the norm for years, and it lead to an entire hobby built around collecting replicas of live firearms. Some of these are so similar that even under close scrutiny, it can be difficult to impossible for someone to identify the real weapon. The Sigma above is made from the same composites as the live weapon and the weight is close enough, with the magazine loaded that, as someone who's handled both the live weapon and that airsoft, there isn't much difference. The iconography is right. If you pull the slide the internals are all wrong, but the only external difference is a small engraved warning on the right side of the slide.

 

[Sovvolf]

snip

While I think a "this is my gun" thread would be a fun idea, I feel it probably would deserve its own thread. As for the guns, I could tell neither from being real outside of close inspection. The Smith and Wesson Springfield would probably still convince me at close range.

Though the orange cap thing doesn't seem to apply over here in Briton. Outside of toy stores you don't see many sold with them. They all come without orange cap ends for some reason though I take that as a plus cause the cap end things always looked real silly.

The point is, highly realistic airsoft pistols were the norm for years, and it lead to an entire hobby built around collecting replicas of live firearms. Some of these are so similar that even under close scrutiny, it can be difficult to impossible for someone to identify the real weapon. The Sigma above is made from the same composites as the live weapon and the weight is close enough, with the magazine loaded that, as someone who's handled both the live weapon and that airsoft, there isn't much difference. The iconography is right. If you pull the slide the internals are all wrong, but the only external difference is a small engraved warning on the right side of the slide.

Indeed the above Handcannon weighs around 2.5kg little more when loaded, the only reason you can tell it apart from a real Dan Wesson magnum is the barrel. Only the pellet pistol as that barrel also, the grip breaks apart for the co2 canister to fit. Otherwise, to the naked eye, weapon like that, without the cap would look extremely authentic to the naked eye which is why you need to take extra caution with such things to avoid confusion. Ho and don't fetch it on School grounds.

I tend to shoot at my cousins every Saturday, when I had work Sundays, I left it at my cousins under his supervision while I went to work, then picked it up on the way home and put it in its carrier case. I wasn't stupid enough to take it to a public place like work or a school ground, cause I didn't want to face a ARU aiming MP5 machine guns at me. That said I think its clear common sense didn't enter into this teens mind and it looks more and more likely that it was suicide via cop.

As pointed out with your airpistol, its pretty much identical, even someone who is familiar with firearms is going to have a great deal of trouble telling the difference in such a situation as mentioned in the article. Only upon close inspection would you be able to tell.

 

[Todd Ralph]

ive said it before; I love when people who have no training or experience spew forth garbage that they have no comprehension about.

when you take deadly force training you learn a few things. 1 there are no warning shots. 2 you shoot to kill, not wound, not take prisoner, not to scare. you shoot to kill and remove the threat.

3 its called the escalation of force
1 calmly ask
2 tell
3 make
4 shoot

you follow what the criminal scum does. they pull out a weapon you pull yours out and end it before they have a chance to hurt anyone.

4. pepper spray and its more pissed off older cousin OC spray aren't that bad. yes Ive had level 1 (direct contact to the face)(a link to the training http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-9CmuXj6r8&context=C3f3e816ADOEgsToPDskLrBHLxxcf-GNnE8pVldZMC )) level two (indirect contact to the face) and level 3 (oc is in the air contact to the face) so I think I know what im talking about)) and in each one a person is most definitely able to continue working or the crime they are committing. in each event i had to take down multiple opponents and apprehend them until proper authorities arrived to remove them.


5. for all of you saying that he was only 15 and a child are you seriously that stupid? hell 15 year old used to be expected to have a family and fight wars and many other terrible things. Hell Luke Woodham was only 16 when he shot and killed 2 people at Pearl High School. There really isnt that much of a difference between 15 and 16 and hell we send 17 year olds over seas to die for our country.... so you might want to change your stance on this whole age thing.


in the end everyone who feels sorry for the kid and is against the cops who acted appropriately in this instance are all idiots. also rubber bullets wont work just as oc and pepper spray arent great deterrents either

 

[SillyBear]

"Why was so much excess force used on a minor?" he asked. "Three shots. Why not one that would bring him down?"

He has a point there. This story is pretty fucked. Yes, the police had reason to feel threatened, but he was just a kid. He obviously snapped over something but he didn't deserve to die. Why did they shoot him three times? Why won't they release what the kid said before he died? Do we have anything other than their word that the gun "closely resembled the real thing"? It just kind of stinks.

Edit: I'm editting since I can't be bothered replying to everyone who quoted me. Okay, you've convinced be. Shooting to kill is an absolutely legitimate way of dealing with a child. Please stop quoting me now, I don't care that much.

The "just a kid" classic doesn't work when the kid has a rifle. The police thought this guy was holding a real firearm and he was aiming it at them. Him being fifteen is irrelevent. Guns are deadly so they made sure he was down.

I don't blame them either. I would have shot too and I would have made damn sure he wouldn't get up. It's tragic that this was all a mistake and it was just a pellet gun - but still, you can't expect the police to be supermen. Sad.

 

[ElPatron]

only had a pellet gun.

The kid had it coming.

 

[Gamergeek25]

A quote from the article
"Fifteen-year-old Jaime Gonzalez "had plenty of opportunities to lower the gun and listen to the officers' orders, and he didn't want to," Interim Police Chief Orlando Rodriguez said."
Right then and there he had his chances and he ignored it
the Weapon
"the boy brandished what looked like a handgun and pointed it at officers. It turned out to be a pellet gun that closely resembled the real thing."

Safe to bet everyone thought it was the real thing.


"A student was in her first-period class in the gym when the school was locked down. She said friends who were closer to the confrontation heard the boy threaten to kill everyone."

He had the intention to kill people refused to cooporate and wielded what everyone (assumed) at the time believed to be a hand gun. Minor or not this Jamie had his chance and the officer did the right thing.

 

[The Human Torch]

If the kid wasn't waving a pallet gun towards the police, or would have put it down at the request of the police officers, he would have still been walking around now. If you want to live, don't be a stupid asshole.

 

[boyvirgo666]

Probably shouldn't have been waving a pellet gun around in school. If he shaved off the orange cap thing on the gun, it could look pretty damn real from a distance. I don't consider it excessive for cops to take out someone who clearly appears to be armed with a firearm and refuses repeated warnings to put it down, especially since school shooters aren't exactly unheard of. Tragic, but not excessive.

Also they followed training and police procedure. He had what appeared to be a gun and they had evidence that it wasnt a gun. He pointed it at them. They shoot him. He had it coming.
I wont be popular for saying this but I dont feel sorry for the kid at all, clears some stupid out of the gene pool.
And dont quote me i dont wanna hear it.

 

[Andothul]

My brother had a pellet gun a ways back and it looked exactly like a real gun except really close up.

There was no way for these officers to know, they are not at fault here.

 

[Bat Vader]

I'm just going to say how i feel on this one so don't bother hating.
Your country makes me fucking sick that you can be justified in killing a child who had what is essentially a toy, and it makes me sicker that some of you think that's just alright. Fuck you

There is no need to insult people.

it is regrettable the teen died but unfortunately he brought it on himself when he decided to do what he did. If he had done what the police ordered him to do he would still be alive.

If the police officers knew the gun was a toy they would have reacted differently. Unfortunately they didn't know it was a toy till after they shot him.

I think this shows the companies that make realistic looking toy guns that perhaps they need to stop making them look realistic so this event doesn't happen in the future.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

I'm also wondering if this was a suicide by cop.

Jaime's best friend, 16-year-old Star Rodriguez, said her favorite memory was when Jaime came to her party Dec. 29 and they danced and sang together.

"He was like a brother to me," she said.

There's your answer: dude thought he was in there with a close friend, danced with her on New Years, then got told he was 'like a brother'

I think I know who's fault this is.

Am I failing to detect sarcasm here? Or do you really think that it's her "fault"?

I wouldn't want to live in a world where girls have to start a relationship with anybody who shows interest, just in case they do something as stupid as this when rejected.

If you are being sarcastic, then that's okay.

Im fairly certain its just a joke. A joke I feel horrible for finding hilarious

 

[TacticalAssassin1]

My police force would never have to deal with the problem as even the idea of a child having a gun in Ireland is ridiculous and if he did manage to get one the cops couldn't shoot him anyway. Just the way it should be.

Are you actually trolling here?

What? So you are saying that it's better the way it is in America? ha.

Whats better in America? you make no sense. You mean the fact that if some looney 15 year old gets loose on School grounds with what is potentially a lethal firearm, refuses to put it down and starts pointing it at the police in a manner of wanting to shoot, they are justified in taking him out?

My point is that there has never been a school shooting in Ireland. Ever. Kids can't get guns and thats that. In my country a tool that can ends a mans life instantly from a great distance is actually nearly impossible to get. Fucked up am I right? My country is so backwards.

Never been a school shooting, aye?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre

What are your precious police going to do in that situation?