Posted on 01/14/2006 4:44:59 PM PST by Peace4EarthNow
LONGWOOD, Fla. - The 15-year-old boy shot by police while brandishing a pellet gun in a middle school bathroom was clinically brain dead Saturday but was being kept alive to harvest his organs, his family's attorney said.
Christopher Penley was expected to die Saturday night, said family attorney Mark Nation.
"His organs are in the process of being harvested," Nation told reporters outside a hospital.
Earlier, Kelly Swofford, a family spokeswoman and neighbor of the boy's parents Ralph and Donna Penley, said the boy had died and that the family was "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.
Police had said Friday night that the boy was on "advanced life support." The hospital refused to release any information Saturday.
"Everybody in the whole neighborhood is really upset," Paul Cavallini, who lives across the street from the Penleys, said Saturday. "He was a quiet kid — polite and everything. He was just a normal teenager."
However, friends and investigators say he was also bullied and emotionally distraught, and went to school that day expecting to die.
Patrick Lafferty, a 15-year-old neighbor who has known Penley about six years, said he wasn't surprised by what happened. He said Penley was a loner who "told me he wanted to kill himself dozens of times."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Special Agent Danny Banks, with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, holds a pellet gun used by a 15-year-old student to threaten classmates and hold sheriff's deputies at bay at Milwee Middle School in Seminole County, Fla., Friday, Jan. 13, 2006.
Members of a SWAT team from the Seminole County Sheriff's Office shot and wounded the student, who brandished the weapon that appeared to be a 9mm handgun, but was actually a pellet pistol modified to look like an actual firearm.
SBC I suppose.
What a tragedy. I pray for his family.
Frankly, the kid was brain dead before the police shot him.
How horrible for everyone involved -- the troubled kid, his family, and the officer who must be feeling guilty, even though he knows he did what he should have done. Prayers for all involved.
I bet he won't do that again.
Parents should be held liable.
I thought the same thing, but decided not to use it. I figured if I did I would get 12 posts caling me a cold heartless bastard.
I saw the ap put this out with the headline "Eighth Grader Shot By Police Braindead". Gotta love how they spin that.
How true... could the officer go back into the field and be expected NOT to hesitate the next time someone point a weapon at him?
It is a tragic situation, but I don't see how the officers could have reacted any differently. You have a kid who at one point has taken a hostage who is brandishing what looks like a gun and points it at an officer. The officer is trained to shoot, and should shoot in that situation. Tragic but their can be some awful consequences of waving around what looks like a real gun.
Should be "8th grader who held child hostage, dies"
For what? Having a gun in their house?
Amen....
Hi there! I'm a cold heeartless bastard! The kid was stupid and the parents should be charged!
But accurate.
Darwin Award nominee.
http://www.darwinawards.com/
Okay, so I'm a cold heartless bastard. LOL
It's a shame the kid wound up this way, but I don't see what alternative the officers had. He brought it on himself.
Sounds like the neighbor's picked up on "The Script" that resides in every inner city 'hood.
"My son was a good boy....he didn't run with no gangs...he was in the wrong place at the wrong time...he was about to start back to school...the po-lice murdered him...." - bla, bla, bla
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