Posted on 05/02/2013 5:36:14 PM PDT by jazusamo
A North Carolina Eagle Scout who was expelled and arrested for accidentally leaving a shotgun in his pickup truck in the school parking lot has been offered a scholarship to attend Liberty University.
Cole Withrow was just a few weeks from graduating with honors from Princeton High School when he was arrested on Monday and slapped with a felony weapons charge. Withrow had been skeet shooting with friends a day before and had only noticed he had left his shotgun in his truck as he reached to grab his book bag.
When he realized his mistake, he went to the front office and called his mother. An administrator overheard the conversation and called police.
Withrow’s story has generated national attention. Hundreds of people have joined a Facebook community to show their support. And many local parents are upset over what many believe is a case of a young man getting severely punished for trying to do the right thing.
“You teach your kids if you’re in trouble or if you see you’ve done something wrong, go ahead and admit it,” family friend Kimberly Boykin said. “Be a man and it’ll be fixed. In this case, that’s what he did and he’s being punished for it. That’s not the lesson we need to teach our kids.”
Jerry Falwell, Jr., the chancellor of Liberty University, had been traveling through North Carolina and saw a local television news account of Withrow’s ordeal. He also noticed that the 18-year-old was wearing a “Liberty University” t-shirt.
Falwell told Fox News that he made a few calls and discovered that Withrow’s sister is a Liberty graduate.
“I was really impressed with what a meek and humble Christian kid he is,” Falwell said. “I thought he would be a perfect fit at Liberty.”
So the chancellor made the 18-year-old an offer he couldn’t refuse.
“I told him that we would give him whatever scholarships he needed to attend Liberty University,” he said.
Falwell said the university is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure the teenager gets a college education.
“The anti-gun zealots seem to be vilifying him for making an honest mistake,” he told Fox News. “We want to reward him for trying to do the right thing.”
And that means even helping the young man finish his last few weeks of high school. Falwell said they offered to let him finish his high school work through their online academy.
Liberty University, located in Lynchburg, Va., is the world’s largest Christian university with nearly 100,000 students. The chancellor said he’s been flooded with messages of support for Withrow from the Liberty community.
“It’s something our whole university feels good about,” he said.
For now Withrow, who had a spotless record, faces a precarious future. It’s unclear at this point how the pending criminal charges will be worked out.
Falwell called the boy’s predicament “disturbing and unsettling.”
“When you see a basketball player who is glorified for announcing that he’s gay and then you see an honest young man like Cole arrested and treated like a criminal for making an honest mistake – you wonder what’s happening to our country,” he said. “The culture seems to be completely disconnected from our roots – our Christian heritage and our Constitution. I hope the American people wake up before it’s too late.”
As they say in the UK, good show, Liberty Univ.!
Are there any liberals out there that aren’t idiots???
BUMP!!
Public schools are slime.
Worthless liberal slime.
Smelly Obamastuff slime.
Shoot, store( your gun), shutup.
Liberty University law degree and an Eagle Scout background is practically a shoe-in for the FBI/Treasury Dept.
I certainly would suggest that any school administrator who gleefully ran him through the wringer have all their crap in order going back at least seven years.
how wonderful
Awesome!
Guess Obama won’t call Cole????
I llive ten minutes outside of Lynchburg, and I can say that Liberty students are good kids.
The school recently decided to allow students to carry concealed weapons on campus.
Amen! The irony of this is beyond our wildest imagination.
It would be nice to believe this will make other administrators think but I doubt that most are capable of it.
As disturbing as it is to see what this kid, who obviously is walking the straight-and-narrow path, has to go through for being honest, it is still more disturbing that nobody in this vast chain of tax-consuming public servants had the good sense to stop the idiocy. Nobody in the school administration, not one police officer, not a prosecutor, no elected official has stood up to the rest of them and said “this is wrong”
That tells me that there is nothing these tax consumers won’t do to their fellow citizens in a time of distress.
It’s tax consumers vs. tax payers.
God Bless Liberty University!~!~
“”when he was arrested on Monday and slapped with a felony weapons charge.””
Is there no one left who can use a brain and common sense at the same time? I hope this school takes a beating in the press and TV. A FELONY CHARGE?? For a young man like this who had to work like the dickens to make Eagle Scout?
But I suppose there are those “other folks” who see it as being unfair to those who were never given that “opportunity” - Balderdash!
The University is right - when are people going to wake up? The University is deserving of all our thanks when they saw the wrong and made the gesture to make it right! I’m not sure that’s approved of anymore in this country!
Sounds like a stand up kid. Sad he wasn’t homeschooled. You can teach gunsmithing in a homeschool. Kudos to Liberty, what a decent thing to do!
Now all he needs is a lady lawyer who used to babysit the judge’s kids, and a DA who’s got reelection nipping his heels.
And a convergence of the planets and maybe a thunderbolt or two.
“Are there any liberals out there that aren’t idiots???”
Ha - you’re not catching me on that one!!!
(liberal and idiot are just different spellings of the same word)
That is fantastic news.
Why is “intent” always looked at in the law except for legal gun owners?
It’s ok, MY public school is JUST WONDERFUL, not like those evil people in Princeton.
Nope, if they knew MY CHILD had a gun in his car, they would simply let him take care of the problem (maybe drive home, or just leave the car alone). We would NEVER, EVER, let OUR precious children attend such an evil school - NEVER!!!
So I have NOTHING TO WORRY about when I my precious children on that big yellow bus, yep, nothing to worry about.
(how conservatives rationalize the destruction of their kids’ futures, when the know full-well who is running the schools)
This is how it’s done.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
