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 ...
You're dead-on right... Bond's preferred sidearm *is* the Walther PPK...
the infowarrior
Hmm. For once something happened in my neck of the woods.
News is the parents have hired a "high-profile lawyer". I'm sure they are just hoping for a settlement as the kid sure seems like he went to school ready to die that day.
One funny part: they interviewed this girl who said that teachers were running all over the building screaming, "Code Red. Code Red!!"
Parents actually had to pick up their kids at a building next door to the school which belongs to the local electric company.
That's a real shame. IMO, the left sold out our children decades ago, yet they're still in charge of the education system. Your friend has my sympathy.
I agree that this is really disturbing. I think that the cops did what they had to do in this situation, but I also feel that the schools should crack down on the bullying that goes on so much these days. If the kids could go to a teacher or counselor and explain what was going on and expect that something be done about it, that this kind of situation could be prevented.
It is always bad when the yougsters fall in dis[re]pair. Chaos is sure to follow.
He detailed several instances in which he would have been legally justified in shooting someone but he didn't.
Too many cops have the attitude, probably because they have been taught to have it, that anytime anyone period, points what may be a gun at them, then they should shoot.
I even recall an incident maybe 20 years ago in which a young kid (four years old) was hiding behind the bed in his bedroom. When the cops broke down the door, he pointed his toy gun at them probably trying to frighten them.
The cops blew him away and proclaimed it a good shoot.
Now that I think about it, this may or may not have been a TV show, but the same message was put out anyway. That the cops were perfectly correct in blasting the little fellow.
"Swat team for a single perp, with a hand gun might be called overreaction."
How many perps with guns at a school do we need to have before a swat team would NOT be an over reaction? Two? Twelve?
In the belief that the kid had a REAL gun and was threatening others and being chased....this was not an overreaction in my opinion.
probably on Ritalin and an SSRI. Most of the school shooters were on these medications.
probably on Ritalin and an SSRI. ( Coleus)
Probably urged on the parents and child by the government school officials.
Not unusual. When I first started teaching 17 years ago, I registered a ninth grader to VOTE. He failed the 9th grade like three times. He affiliated democrat, of course. For the last nine years I've taught in the inner city. Right now I have a senior that's almost 21. He's finally going to graduate. Then he's joining the army. I think that's the only reason he's stayed in school. He really wants to be a soldier and they're not taking anybody who doesn't have the diploma.
Yes, it's a terrible thing. I was about 10 years old when a kid in our neighborhood was found at home with a gunshot wound to the head. He was only 13.
His parents were devastated. Police ruled it a suicide, but the kids parents and a lot of us wondered if it could have just been an accident.
We'll never know, but something like this sticks with you a long time. I still remember the moment when I heard the news of his death just as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.
Like you said, prayers for all involved.
Nor is he likely to encounter bullies, to look on the other side of that picture. I'd wonder if the lad had intended to pull the "gun" on one or more of the bullies.
Ayup. Conform or Be Picked On.
My apologies. You are correct.
The gun used in this crime WAS a pellet gun. That means it was NOT a toy and therefore would never have had an orange tip.
This simply means the young man WAS pointing a real gun at a police officer... pretty stupid.
I'm with you on the home school, however, not everyone can do it.
I have problems with the term: 'harvesting' organs. Couldn't they call it something else? Clearly, they're trying to put a positive spin on the fact that some poor soul's dead and they're taking his/her organs to transplant into someone else. But it's really disgusting and smacks of a soon to come time when clones hang from hooks in a clinical warehouse while workers 'harvest' their organs.
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