Posted on 01/15/2006 1:51:35 PM PST by wagglebee
LONGWOOD, Florida (CNN) -- The father and brother of a teenager shot at school Friday while brandishing a pellet gun told authorities before an officer opened fire that Christopher Penley's gun was not real, the family's attorney said Saturday.
The eighth-grader is clinically brain dead and being kept on life support to harvest his organs, attorney Mark Nation said.
When Ralph Penley arrived at the school Friday to help police and school officials defuse the situation, he wasn't allowed inside, Nation said.
Nation said Ralph Penley was "angry" because he had spoken to police before he arrived at the school and told them Christopher did not have a real gun. Christopher's younger brother told school officials the same thing, Nation said.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Assuming that his FR homepage is true [I do], he's not a troll.
When you point a gun at someone it ceases to matter whether you are a child, woman, cripple, old geezer, friend, retard, relative or any other sympathy evoking persona. You are simply a person with a gun whose intent seems clear enough from your actions. If they actually have different ideas that's too bad. No one reads minds.
Posting an incendiary comment like that on this website that is NOT sarcasm does not reflect well on the credibility of the poster.
How did the father know this? Does this mean he knew his kid took the gun to school? Sounds like it to me. Only has himself to blame and not the police. They did their job and the father didn't do his.
Fair enough. But if they were in close quarters (a bathroom), why didn't they just stun him?
Well, I might be saying the same thing this father is saying. I do not blame the father for the things he says.
But neither do I blame the Police. The Police made the right call.
If you don't see how those statements can be consistent, look again.
No, that wasn't my point. I was referring to the fact that many people keep calling it a "fake" gun, disregarding the fact that pellet guns can indeed kill.
Now, if the SWAT guys knew for a fact that it was a pellet gun and shot anyway, they would be wrong. But there was no way to know that in this situation.
Sorry if I garbled what I was saying.
I took a look at his comments page. This was not the first time the poster took "shots" at police officers.
Can't tell. I'm pretty sure the top one because of brandname. But you wouldn't be able to id it without seeing it up close.
What wasn't partly the parent's falt?
The failure to be involved enough in their child's life to teach him alternate methods to solve problems?
The being unaware that their child had a pellet gun and was painting it to look real?
The failure to contact school authorities and try to find out what was being done to protect the boy before any of this happened?
The failure to get this troubled child help before he decided on suicide?
Shall I go on?
I understand what you're saying. I thought "troll" too, for a while.
Equally important, the cops' job is to see that all the other kids at the school go home alive. In that kind of a situation, if a 15 year old perp paints a pellet gun to look like a real gun, the cops need to take the kid at his word and waste him.
Actually, what happened was a really good thing in the overall scheme of things. For the first time a would be mass shooter has been killed on the spot, not disabled and captured, but KILLED. That ought to send an unmistakable message to any other Columbine wannabes: You try it, you fail and you die.
I think that the party in question has had a bad experience in the past--but that's just my guess.
I guess you've never been in a life threatening situation. The fear can be overwhelming.
I do, too. But that poor kid now has to live with the fact that he killed his mom, scumbag or not.
Running from the Police is a dangerous activity. All sorts of bad things can happen if you run from the police. It is tragic.
I'm not going go high-fiving my friends and shout "Hell YEAH!" over this. But nor am I going to blame the Police.
Thanks, you are right, I'm not a troll. Pretty darn right wing, like most of the people here. But everyone has their own opinions...and we express them here on FR, within the rules...no personal attacks. But thanks for defending me against the personal attacks. I should be talking to the moderator.
Assuming that is true, he ought to know that making comments like that are going to go over like a lead balloon here. Unhelpful, ill-advised, and plain stupid.
Actually, that was my point exactly. The parents were to some extent at fault for what happened. I never said they weren't. In fact, I said that there were those that said that the parents didn't have any fault on one of the previous threads on this very topic (of course then it was relating to mental illness).
As for answers to your questions
They failed.
They reported about the gun, not knowing they had a pellet gun.
Actually, didn't they drive up to the school to find out what was going on and was denied (that remains to be seen whether that was true or not).
They did fail to get the kid psychological help.
Don't need to.
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