A 4-year-old boy walked to school with a loaded gun, Texas authorities said Wednesday, days after a similar incident in Arizona, as the start of the school year reignites fears of school shootings.
On Wednesday morning, an off-duty officer reported a “4-year-old male student in possession of a loaded handgun” on the grounds of a Corpus Christi elementary school, police in this southern Texas city said.
Father arrested and charged
Investigators went to the boy’s home and identified the gun’s owners, his parents, police added in a news release.
The 30-year-old father was arrested and charged with making a firearm accessible to a child and abandoning or endangering a child, according to Corpus Christi police.
Massacres regularly mourn American schools. In May, America was marked by the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 children and two teachers died.
On Monday, a 7-year-old student showed up at school with a gun in his backpack and some ammunition, according to the Cochise, Arizona, sheriff’s office.
Nearly 400 million weapons in circulation in the country
After another of his guns was reported missing by the boy’s father, a second weapon was discovered hidden in the school’s administrative premises.
“When questioned, the parents stated that the weapons had been placed in what they believed to be a safe place, away from the children, (…) but apparently the young student was able to access it and take the weapons to ‘school’, the Cochise Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Thursday.
The child will be the subject of a process before the juvenile justice system, he added.
About 400 million guns are in circulation in the United States, more than the number of inhabitants.
Source: BFM TV
