9-Year-Old Took Loaded Gun to School Over Bullying

A 9-year-old child took a loaded handgun to school and threatened three of his classmates in Lauderhill, Florida, according to police.

According to the statement, the boy said, “You see this, this is a real gun” as he leveled a loaded .380 caliber Ruger handgun at three of his third-grade classmates.

The police statement, obtained by local media, said he made “threatening comments regarding being bullied by the victims.”

Officers were alerted to an incident at Lauderhill Paul Turner Elementary School shortly after 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 3,

Lauderhill police spokeswoman, Yvonne Marquez-Perkins told Fox News, “We received a report that a 9-year-old child, a third-grader, brought a gun to school. He took the gun out of his backpack and threatened three of his classmates.”

Marquez-Perkins said it was an isolated incident.

The school was not evacuated at any point, Local 10 News reported, and it took about two minutes for the school resource officer to diffuse the situation.

The boy was taken into custody on three counts of aggravated assault and one count of possession of a firearm on school property reported NBC Miami. He was brought to the Broward County Juvenile Assessment Center.

His parents were “visibly upset” and denied their child had a history of mental illness, said a police statement.

At the time of writing, there are no reports indicating how the child got the gun.

According to the Miami Herald, a letter distributed by the school principal said that another student had alerted staff to the fact that a student had a gun on campus.