Texas police kill 8th-grader carrying pellet gun

In a country where real guns could be exchanged hands anytime, anywhere and with anyone, I do believe the cops had to do a judgement call in this occasion.

But in the other hand, they could have used "less deadly" force to the kid, considering that a 15-year old kid is quite a large target. And 3 shots seem a tad bit too many.

This is a scary and sad story. Kids that can carry guns, real or not, to school and law enforcement using deadly force on kids. In the end, everyone looses; the kid, the kid's family, and those police that had to take such measures. Additionally, the school and it's students will carry a heavy sadness...no school wants to have something like this happen.

Why 3 shots...?

If 1 shot is enough to put him down...

In my day kids brought toy guns to school all the time, teachers and principals dealt with it if they felt it was too inappropriate.

The cops have become way too trigger happy.

What ever happened to shooting to disable??? Not in Texas, I guess...

"Why 3 shots...? If 1 shot is enough to put him down"...

Have you ever had a gun pointed at you?

Can you tell you hit your target before the target returns fire?

We were not there so it is a hard call to make from the safety of your own home.

"In my day kids brought toy guns to school all the time, teachers and principals dealt with it if they felt it was too inappropriate".

What day was that?

I have several airsoft guns and if I tried to walk down any town USA or Japan and point it at a cop, I would expect a harsh answer for my actions. Toy guns are made to look very real and if they don't have the required red tip in the US, you will be dealt with.

Like most cops in the US, it's easier and safer to shoot first and answer questions later!

In my day kids brought toy guns to school all the time, teachers and principals dealt with it if they felt it was too inappropriate.

Try reading the article again. Nobody knew he had the pellet gun until he drew it on officers. The school called the cops over a boy getting punched. In my day, the school would have dealt with that, not escalate the situation by calling police.

And FYI, a pellet gun is NOT a toy. It can kill small animals and cause serious damage to a person. Many look like more serious weapons.

I think the officers deserve some praise for not shooting him when, after refusing orders to stop, he reached wherever he reached for this weapon. They deserve even more praise for actually letting him draw it and even get all the way to the point of pointing it at the officers. That is beyond the call of duty for restraint. Many would have shot him sooner and still been within their rights. These guys waited, and put themselves in great risk.

3 bullets from two officers? Well, they are not mind readers. They don't know the other officer will shoot too. Time does not freeze for them to discuss who will shoot and who won't, nor does it freeze and allow them to determine if the weapon being pointed at them is a .22 rifle or a pellet gun.

Hindsight is 20/20 and if it had turned out to be a proper rifle, many would say it was a job well done. Well, the officers had no way of knowing until after the fact.

His age is also irrelevant. The first gun I fired was a .38 and I was 10 years old. I could have killed someone with that the same as if I was 20. Guns don't take your age into account!

This young man was in 8th grade. I remember being in 8th grade. I owned a pellet gun too. I would not have pointed it a police unless I had a death wish. 8th grade is definitely old enough to understand these things.

A 15 year old should have known better than to point a weapon at armed police, or even bring toy guns to the school. Pretty sure most schools have specific rules against that after the school shootings of previous years.

Wow! What a paranoid and trigger happy society. It seems like the government has done a great job in making everyone nervous with it's BS 'imminent threat' and 'always be on guard' rhetoric.

Wow! What a paranoid and trigger happy society

So was seeing some kid punching out random students, waving a gun around and pointing it at the cops an everyday occurrence at the school you were in at 15?

They leave out the fact that this 8th grader was 15 years old, probably had developmental issues. I do think the cops now a days are way out of control, they are very very rarely ever held to account for their actions, it has to be something so outrageous and caught on video before anything ever happens to a cop... This needs to change, I will be the last person heaping any praise on Japanese Law Enforcement, but in the area or courtesy, respect and preservation of life, I do think American cops could learn a lot.

I think America needs to re-think how they train and recruit cops, there's this whole attitude that cops can do no wrong,

Now a days, in America, if you run across a cop having a bad day, you could end up not only getting arrested, but getting your skull cracked open, for nothing more than asking a few question, and it's not at all what you do, but rather how the cop perceives this whole interaction. If the cop feels you are being a smartass or that you are slighting him, you could end up in the hospital with resisting arrest charges thrown in to boot. And good luck getting a lawyer, because the cops and police unions have crafted a legal system that allows the cops to make mistakes, or mistakes in judgment.

Look at that cop who shot and killed the unarmed, handcuffed guy on the San Francisco (BART) subway platform... They had him on camera, shooting the guy in the back, and that cop didn't even serve a year, he got out 6 months ago.

Sounds like suicide by cop to me. With all the stories about school shootings that people all around the world read, how would this guy assume that the cops would think what he points at them is a pellet gun?

In Japan, that thinking could probably be excused, but in the US?

America - Land of the "Gun touting, trigger happy cowboy". But seriously...shooting to disable him would not prevent him from firing a real weapon if he had one. I would have to say...if the police gave him plenty of warnings and ordered him to put down the weapon, then their action, in this case, was justified. They had no idea whether the gun was real or not. You just don't point a gun (real or fake) and law enforcement agencies. In America, it's "instant death penalty" if you threaten the life of a police officer - especially in Texas! Sad, everyone loses here!

Shoot to kill!! Kill!! Kill!! Yes this is the America we all know and love so dearly. RIP Jr high kid with some strange issues that ended him getting shot to death out there in the Lone Star state of Texas!!!

Only in Texas

It's only the first week of the new year 2012 so sadly enough we will read similar news reports a few times a month from the USA making happy with few handguns here in Japan.

Authorities declined to share what the boy said before being shot

Why? This seems a little fishy.

How fast did all of this happen? Did someone at least have the chance to try talking to the boy before the police came in shooting?

She said friends who were closer to the confrontation heard the boy threaten to kill everyone.

Does sound like a very scary situation. Still, it sounds terrible for cops to be immediately claiming that their actions were 'justified'. They just killed a 15-year-old boy! Sad, sad story.

BuddhaMexicano

Shoot to kill!! Kill!! Kill!! Yes this is the America we all know and love so dearly.

Any condemnation of the violent idiot 15 y.o. (still in the 8th grade f.f.s...) waving a gun around and then pointing it at the cops sent to restore order in a freakin elementary school ? Naaah. It's always someone else's fault. 'Oh it's the movies and the violence on TV.' 'Oh it's da system, always comin down on young Latinos waaah waaah.'

RIP Jr high kid with some strange issues that ended him getting shot to death

He didn't have 'strange issues'. He had a death wish. And your silly 'RIP' is meaningless in cyberspace.

Oh, America.

And 3 shots seem a tad bit too many

Why 3 shots...?

What ever happened to shooting to disable???

If a police officer makes the decision to fire his or her weapon, it's with the intent to kill. There are no other circumstances in which they would or should fire a weapon.

Shoot to disable? That only happens in the movies, and anyone believing that it's a simple matter of aiming for a hand, arm, leg, or weapon has obviously never fired a weapon in their life, much less been in a situation where they had to make a choice between firing or not firing when someone was pointing a weapon right back at them.

The kid was waving around what appeared to be a real handgun in a junior high school in the middle of the day while class was in session. That's what's at the heart of the matter. What real choice did the police have? Shoot and maim the kid, giving him an opportunity to pop pff a few shots before the police attempted to wrestle the weapon away from him? That's a great way to get a few innocent bystanders killed, and possibly also a couple of police officers.

The police had a legal and moral obligation to protect the lives of the other children being threatened, NOT take time to consult with their colleagues in the hallway, a la, "Hey, Frank. You wanna' shoot him or should I?" in order to make sure they didn't shoot him too much (I'm rolling my eyes that anyone would even suggest this).

I'm as staunch an advocate of gun control as you're likely to find. Hate the damned things. Wish they were taken -- yes, pried if necessary -- from the hands of every civilian in the United States.

But I'm also pragmatic. The guns are already out there, leaving police little choice but to respond the way they had to with this clearly disturbed 15-year-old. Some posters would do well to spend less time viewing the world through Hollywood-tinted glasses.

Hopefully here in Japan we can get our police to deal with problem students in such a manner to scare the young generation straight. "If you don't behave you'll turn into Americans!" That ought to fix them well quick.

Does anybody remember a little incident in Columbine Colorado some years ago. You same people berating the police (FOR DOING THEIR JOB) would have been the first in line to cast stones at them had the kid shot someone adn they "paused" because he was; a kid, maybe not holding a real gun, perhaps could be chatted with, bribbed by an ice cream cone, talked to trading it for some trading cards....... GET FREAKING REAL!!

This kid was either real stupid with a death wish (Death by Cop) or mentally deficient. Sad either way but the safety of ALL of the other kids trumps. The cops showed restraint and did not come in "Guns a Blazing" like so many of you allude. GUARENTEE these two cops feel like "&$%# right now adn have to live with this for the rest of their lives but I bet (AND HOPE) they would do it again if the situation required. In their field HESITATION KILLS!!! PERIOD!

Seems the majority of you (at least the majority of frequent posters) are two ticks off center or something.... berating cops doing their job; SHAME ON YOU! They risk their lives daily to protect the public that in turn wants to castrate them. Sure, there are bad cops just like bad bankers/cooks/bus drivers/teachers etc.... and they should be dealt with. This is not one of those.

Suicide by cop.

As for people asking why the cops fired 3 shots, well from the description the cops were in motion, the range was not point blank and if anyone here has ever fired a handgun then they'll know that it's hard enough to hit a target at anything more than 10 yards if you're standing still... when you're running it's VERY difficult, and you don't want to miss. Asking for precision shooting (like at a shoulder) is unreasonable, and the cops were acting in defence of their own lives and others'. Does that clear it up for people?

This could have been a suicide but now we will never know but I'm sure cops in the USA are trained in handling these situations but maybe Texas has other ideas?? RIP young boy out in Brownsville.

I'm only surprised they didn't empty their clips on him.

Slightly more seriously, though, the kid didn't have the required red tip on the end of the gun (does that also apply to pellet/BB guns? I thought it was only toy guns), and I don't see that the officers had a choice but to shoot. I think three times was excessive.

okinawamike: "I have several airsoft guns and if I tried to walk down any town USA or Japan and point it at a cop, I would expect a harsh answer for my actions."

You would GET a harsh answer, but the harsh answer would be quite different. In the former they'd shoot first and ask later, where I believe in the latter they would not be as trigger-happy (in general, I'm not saying in every case). A shooting like this is not all that a-typical in the US, whereas in Japan it would be EXTREMELY rare.

okimike67: "Seems the majority of you (at least the majority of frequent posters) are two ticks off center or something.... berating cops doing their job; SHAME ON YOU!"

"Two ticks off center or something...", eh? Aren't you the same poster who said if an eight-year old kid came into your yard to retrieve a ball you'd beat the crap out of him/her to teach them respect?

Frungy, RIGHT ON THE MONEY!!! :)

Elbuda, they are trained and acted as trained. And your RIP for every stupid death is getting boring. It was his OWN FAULT, not the cops!

I wonder what kind of positive spin the NRA crowd will try to put on this??

Tragic, but this should teach kids not to brandish pellet guns or any other kind of guns in school.

Smith, nice spin on the previous posting. Embellishing has always been suspected as an art so craftly demonstrated by your words, now I know it true. At least I know you pay attention. And since you brought it up, similar applies here. Kids nowadays are either getting dumber, simply dont care or parents are failing. Well adjusted and respectful kids dont violate peoples property nor brandish guns in cops faces (toys or not).

I completely agree with the police's actions, despite approving of gun control. There have been enough massacres at US schools to know that a child is quite capable of wreaking havoc. He was not some 8 year old playing cowboys in the garden. The police were in the school for a reason - presumably they had been called by the school who believed that one of their children had pulled a gun.

However, I do not thnk that this would have happened in Japan - no one would have believed that a 15 year old would have had a handgun and would presume it to be one of the many replicas and BB guns you can buy from hobby shops. The police would probably not have even been called.

In gun-saturated USA, you cannot make that assumption and so lax gun laws have resulted in another needless death.

Elbudo Mexicano:

" I wonder what kind of positive spin the NRA crowd will try to put on this?? "

I don´t think this has anything to do with the NRA. Maybe there are countries where it is relatively safe to point a gun a police. Maybe Japan is one of them. Maybe Mexico is. You can tell us that. That the US Is not one of them is something that most everybody in the world knows, and certainly the people who live there.

As a former public school teacher of 25+ years in California, this exact scenario if why, in part, I left that dangerous and sadly sometimes deadly teaching environment to teach in Japan. And, yes, in the small rural Central Valley town where I grew up in northern California (1960s - 1970s), some of the guys did come to high school with hunting rifles mounted inside their trucks. And these same guys had cans of chewing tobacco in the back pockets of their Levis. AND, the teachers smoked (!) in the teachers' room. A few years ago, a former student, then in his early 20s, was brandishing what appeared to be a real gun outside his parents' home in an upscale neighborhood. His mother who feared for her life, did call the sheriff's department. Her son, my former student, refused to put down the weapon, shots were fired and he was killed by a deputy's bullet to the chest. Why not his arm or leg, I don't know. In either of these tragic situations, were the deaths justified? It's not an easy call to make, especially for those of us not actually present. At the end of the day, such a loss has ripples that no one can predict. I pray that this young man's family and friends as well as the police officers involved can find peace in their hearts one day.

What NONE of you has discussed or mentioned is WHY IN THE HELL did the idiot have a pellet gun IN SCHOOL, brandishing it around, in the first place? Seems to me he got himself in this predicament. And yes, I live in Texas, and I find it pathetic that the godmother and stepmother are demanding justice for their slain kid. Why? He put himself in this situation! LEO's (Law Enforcement Officer's) Do not have time to dally around and sit for tea and crumpets to assess the situation when someone is pointing a weapon at them, or what clearly appears to be one. And as far as 3 shots, one might be enough to disable the subject, but he or she can still get up and shoot. So, the correct actions were done and done. It's not a case of Texas vigilante-ism. It's a case of what was supposed to be done right.

Article should read "Highschooler shot after failing to lower suspected weapon"

However, I do not thnk that this would have happened in Japan - no one would have believed that a 15 year old would have had a handgun and would presume it to be one of the many replicas and BB guns you can buy from hobby shops.

I don't think the location should matter. If there is even a remote possibility that the threat is credible then it should be taken seriously.

she flipped threw three close-up photos

threw?? Shoot the proof reader....

Some think he should not have been shot because he was 15. Do these people think 15 year olds can't fire guns? Some think he should not have been shot because he was disturbed. Do these people think disturbed people can't kill cops? Some think he should not have been shot because he had a mere pellet gun. Do these people think cops have Robocop vision goggles, and can determine that a gun is a firearm or a pellet gun instantly with such technology?

I may have been wrong earlier about the order of events. It might be that he drew his gun in the class long before police arrived. But it does seem that all the students who dived under desks also thought it was a firearm. So would you if all you saw was the tip of the barrel pointed right at you from a distance. Cops are not out there to be targets to test whether the weapon pointed at them is deadly or not. Its not just not part of job description. Why should it be?

As a former teacher in Michigan, I can tell you without a doubt that students carrying and using weapons in or around the school is a serious problem. According to the article the officers gave ample opportunities to the student to lay down his arms but the student chose to ignore them. Whether or not it was a suicide or just horribly bad judgement we will never know but the cops were doing their jobs.

Shoot to kill!! Kill!! Kill!! Yes this is the America we all know and love so dearly. RIP Jr high kid with some strange issues that ended him getting shot to death out there in the Lone Star state of Texas!!!

Just yesterday people were posting about the J-cops who told the Aum member who wanted to turn himself in to go to the next station as being incompetent. Police have a difficult job. We can sit here and arm chair this thing in many different ways, but bottom line, a 15 yr old boy had a gun and police reacted in a way to make sure that they were coming home. We don't see any pictures of this kid, but how big was he? They grow pretty big in Texas and what if this guy was some type of athlete who was larger than normal, are you still willing to take chances on someone with a gun in their hands who is also big?

Brownsville is right across the border from Matamoros, Tamaulipas Mexico. Home to one of the most dangerous drug cartels (Gulf Cartel), and there are many cases of young boys being caught up in the drug trade who will kill in an instant. So I don't blame the cops, they were faced with a difficult decision. THe kid may have had mental issues, but he was smart enough to know that you don't show a weapon in public, or there would have been calls to the police about a kid at school with an open weapon and not just about a fist fight. The kid, in my book, is still responsible for his own death.

To the kid's mother: Stupid quote. "Great kids" don't brandish an apparently deadly weapon in a confrontation with law enforcement. "Great kids" would have put the weapon down when first instructed to do so.

To those wondering why they didn't shoot an arm or a leg: Spend less time in the movie theatre. Only in the movies or cartoons does the good guy intentionally shoot to disable and not kill. REAL life is not what you see on the silver screen. If a REAL cop has to fire their weapon it will be aimed to kill, not maim/wound/"wing"/scare. What happens if you aim to "wing" a suspect, miss, and the suspect subsequently shoots you or someone else? Cops are trained that if they HAVE to fire, they should be aiming for center body mass. The adreneline flowing during the confrontation means it would be almost impossible to pick-off an arm or leg anyways.

To those wondering why there were three shots when "one was enough": Three cops - one shot, each, and almost simultaneously. DUH! Or perhaps you think that when a team enters a school, only ONE cop is the "designated shooter" and the others are there just for show? If three (or more) cops are aimed at me and I raise my weapon in a threatening manner, I can expect three (or more) bullets simultaneously heading my way.

"What happens if you aim to "wing" a suspect, miss, and the suspect subsequently shoots you or someone else?"

I will you do one better. What happens when the bullet goes through the leg and goes on to kill an innocent student hiding under a desk?

Those so sure the cops are in the wrong either live in a fantasy land or just don't want to give cops a break no matter what.

I generally despise cops and America's gun culture. But expecting 100 percent perfection in such situations is the realm of the idiot, and so is demanding the impossible.

I agree with Alphaape on this one. It's close to the border where drug cartels rule and the cops can barely maintain a semblance of control that other US cities might have. The US MX border is THE most traveled border in the world and I'd bet has one of the worst crime rates. You can't blame the cops in this situation.

First off: why would a kid pull a gun of ANY kind on a COP?!?! He was ASKING to get shot.

Second: why did he NOT put it DOWN unless he had an intent to USE IT?!

Third: many people who are propperly trained to use pistols are trained to shoot twice. The shot to the head of the teenager was propbably an instinctive reaction because of training. When using a hand gun like that you're taught to shoot once to the torso and as you get the kickback you automatically allow the force to draw the weapon up for a automatic secondary shot to the head in line with the one from the torso. It's not always a thought "oh Im just gonna shoot him again for good measure". That's what this man was probably trained to do. And in a tense situation like that you do just that.. what you're trained to do.

It's well advertised in them parts. Don't mess with Texas.

The kid's dead and that is clearly what he wanted. One less idiot in the gene pool.

Stoopid kid!

I think that the police had no choice so they did what they have to and it is very hard to make a choice like that they will have to live with that. if the family demands justice I would recommend putting the parents behind bars since that kid was their responsibility the kid also had little choice maybe he was raised to be as stupid as he was or he was born that way if the latter then I would let the parents go free.

this is a tragedy and blaming the cops or the kid won't stop it from happening again, what needs to be done it's find a way to get rid off all those guns on the street. weapons are one of the stupidest invention of man, we have to cure the source fore we can get rid off the problem, we don't respect each others life, we see race, color, country. it's not Latinos and it's not the US and it's not japan, it's us!

Shoot to kill!! Kill!! Kill!! Yes this is the America we all know and love so dearly.

What a ridiculous comment; obviously you don't live here. For all you whiners about trigger happy cops, put yourself in their shoes. A kid in a school freaking out (he had just punched another kid in the nose for no reason) pulls out a gun. Have you seen 'toy' pellet guns these days? They are made to resemble hunting or assault rifles, or for 'BB' or air soft pistols to resemble military style weapons. Your a cop and your trained (and hear all to frequently about school shootings these days) to react; you only have seconds. Kid pulls a gun and aims it at you - this is a no-brainer - you shoot. Two of them did, and were good shots, which they should be. Everyone always says 'why didn't they just wound him'. Have you ever been in a pressure situation that involves life and death, and can you comprehend how difficult it is to hit a human target that might be moving? This isn't Hollywood where the main character 'Dirty Harry' type cop can draw from the hip and shoot the gun out of the perps hands. They don't have time to plan it out so that Cop A shoots to wound in the leg while Cop B holds his fire. And if it was you and some kid aimed a gun at you, and for all intensive purposes it looked real - would you hesitate? If the answer is yes then you could never be a cop.

People think cops are trigger happy these days, but in truth cops have to put up with a lot more than they used to, and operate in a far more dangerous environment. How many times have cops just pulled someone over for speeding and they end up being shot at? Lots. Don't blame the police, blame the scumbags who stick guns down in the folds of their baggy, sagging pants have have little remorse in using them. By the way, they aren't NRA members and don't buy their guns legally from Wal-Mart.

Cops are not "trigger-happy" because it's a royal pain in the patootie, paperwork-wise, whenever they discharge their weapon - even if no one is injured in the process. At the least, you're going to be "patrolling a desk" while they investigate the discharge, and at the worst, you will be suspended from the force while they investigate the shooting. That's why they're given alternate non-lethal methods of deterrence to choose from (pepper spray, batons, etc.) when the situation warrants it.

We have not forgotten the horrors of "Colombine HS Massacre" and "Virginia Tech University Massacre". Police had to do everything to protect innocents. There are always two sides of story to tell in the news.

" I wonder what kind of positive spin the NRA crowd will try to put on this?? "

It really doesn't have to be spun. The Second Amendment freedoms saved lives here. In this case the well regulated militia (ie, police), saved the lives of dozens, if not hundreds of people who might have fallen victim to this psycho with a gun in school. The founding fathers and four fathers show their wisdom yet again.

I don't think the location should matter. If there is even a remote possibility that the threat is credible then it should be taken seriously.

TheQuestion: But that is why the location absolutely does matter. In Japan there would not be even a "remote possibility" that a 15-year old would have a real gun, so no one would take it seriously.

In the USA there is a very good possibility that the gun would be real which is why the police had to shoot.

The police gave him multiple warnings to put down the weapon AND HE DID NOT. Those airsoft guns look real, and you don't have a choice to sit there wondering ("well it might be fake") if you do you're dead.

Shooting to wound only happens in the movies...

My guess is that young mommy from Oklahoma who shot to death her stocker would make a fine Texas ranger so get out of Oklahoma and do something meaningful with your life, right?? Get off welfare and join the US Marines for god's sake! See the world and shoot them bad guys and get $$$ too!!

Justified, sadly.

Geez, I feel for the cops in this situation. They have to live with the guilt of knowing that procedurallly, they did the right thing, but they'll always know in the back of their minds that it was a toy gun.

I really feel for those officers. I can't imagine what they must be going through now. They were put through a hell of a situation.

But they did react correctly. They had all those innocent children to protect and their own lives to protect as well. There's no way they could have known.

But that is why the location absolutely does matter. In Japan there would not be even a "remote possibility" that a 15-year old would have a real gun, so no one would take it seriously.

That kind of lax stance is exactly how a number of atrocities have happened in other nations. It would be a great big joke in the eyes of faculty and other students right up to the moment they started shooting and then we'd all be here on JT wondering why nobody called the police.