The dad posted a comment.
We did not allow him to shoot at the house across the street. He was in our very large back yard shooting at his targets with his mother supervising. She stepped inside for long enough to put food in the oven for dinner, and trusted him to stay in the back yard with his targets. He was told to wait until she returned before he shot again. He did not wait. His mom and I agree, we made mistakes in terms of leaving him unattended. It will never happen again. He has been punished over and over for this, the damages were paid in full in less than 3 days after the incident. The person that owns the abandoned house which is about to fall down, I have known for over 15 years. He is already doing community service at our order with our church (cleaning, etc) to repay us for what we came out of pocket for. His bb gun is not a high powered model, it is a Red Ryder spring operated bb gun, 300-400 feet per second at most is the muzzle velocity. I agree that at that power it can still hurt someone easily. For those of you that are so perfect with such perfect children that are passing judgement on us for our mistake, I invite you to come to our home and see how well behaved our son is. Friend me on Facebook and you will see that we are good people who love our son very much. The only reason we got the news involved was because we have a huge problem with the word FELONY that has been put upon our son. We would gladly accept the charges instead of our son, unfortunately, I don’t think that will be a possibility. After the incident occurred, the authorities were called immediately and it was reported by us. Those of you that are accusing us of being terrible parents and calling our son a demon, please, know more about what you are talking about before you comment. I am shocked at some of the things that are being said here by fellow American people. My child is not a mean or malicious person, he is curious about everything. I am not condoning what he did in any way. I am just saying, people make mistakes unlike a lot of the perfect people that come out of the woodwork when something like this happens. I hope this clears up some of the confusion and changes the way people are looking at this terrible situation. If you have any more questions, call me! 704.691.9316, that is my personal cell phone number, I will gladly talk with anyone about what happened. Friend me on Facebook, message me, I will gladly take time to defend the honor of my family. Thank you.
I retract my first comment about the poor target placement.
It sounds like the kid just really screwed up, as kids are wont to do. My bet is that it won't happen again. A little sweat equity to work off the damages is an excellent reinforcement.
Assuming that the "journalist" got the facts right.... I still think that the local prosecutor is being overzealous, though. If he can't handle a rowdy seven year old without dumping felony charges on their head....then he needs to find a new job.