Tag: shots fired

Rally planned for teenager accused in school shooting:

The “Won’t someone think of the children” people are at it again. Today a rally was planned to be held in front of the Jasper County Circuit Court in Joplin, Missouri this morning in honor of Thomas White.

To refresh your memory, White was the teenage gunman at Memorial Middle School in Joplin who fired a round from a MAC-90 into the ceiling of the school, the gun jammed, and White kept pulling the trigger while the gun was pointed at the school’s principal.

Supporters of the boy, who was 13 at the time of the alleged offenses, have planned a rally outside the Jasper County Courts Building before the hearing. White’s mother, Norma White, will attend the rally, according to an announcement issued by a group calling itself Justice for Thomas White.

The boy has received an outpouring of support in recent months from a number of juvenile-advocacy groups, including Justice for Juveniles, the Anti-Bullying Coalition and Bully Police, U.S.A., who argue that the boy is too young to stand trial as an adult.

Yeah, because it worked so well the last time.

White’s parents have said he faced bullying by other students, contributing to what they say was his dread of school and an effort to get himself expelled by taking a loaded gun there.

School officials have said White and his parents never took any complaints of bullying to administrators before the shooting incident.

There are other ways to get yourself expelled that don’t involve firearms. Hell, bring a joint to school. That should work with a lot fewer complications. Not that I’m buying that story, anyway.

How did the rally go? No clue because I don’t care. It probably didn’t do any good anyway.

Parents argue for juvenile justice in school shooting:

The parents of Thomas White, the accused gunman at the Memorial Middle School shooting, have called for leniency in the treatment of their son.

Norma and Greg White also blame themselves, saying they should have listened to their son when he repeatedly said how much he disliked school and asked to be home-schooled.

Instead, Thomas White, 14, is facing being tried as an adult on multiple felonies and his father is serving an 18-month sentence for illegal possession of firearms in the family’s home.

“He’s a good kid, and we let him down,” Greg White told the newspaper.

Ya think? But you didn’t let him down by not homeschooling him. You let him down by having unsecured firearms in the house.

The big deal is that Thomas white is charged as an adult for bringing an assault rifle to school, discharging a round into the ceiling, and pointing the gun at the principal and pulling the trigger. Luckily, the gun jammed.

“He needs punishment,” Greg White said. “We believe in the rule of the law.”

Says the convicted ex-felon in illegal possession of a firearm.

The Whites said they’ve looked at past cases involving school shootings and can’t find another example of a juvenile certified to be tried as an adult when it didn’t involve any deaths or injuries.

They either don’t read this site or didn’t look too hard. In Michigan, Andrew Osantowski was 16 at the time of his arrest and was tried and sentenced as an adult, and he didn’t even bring the guns to school.

Sorry, but there’s no compassion here. He made a conscious choice to take a gun to school with the intent to kill. Only by the grace of God was no one hurt or killed.

Joplin seventh-grader bound over for trial in school shooting:

Let’s take a look at some of the testimony in yesterday’s preliminary hearing about Thomas White, the 14-year-old Memorial Middle School gunman.

During the preliminary hearing, two administrators testified that White pointed the assault rifle directly at them.

Steven Doerr, assistant superintendent of Joplin’s public schools, said White was pointing the rifle at another student in the school’s main hallway when Doerr saw him, ran up and told him to put the weapon down.

“He pulled the rifle down from his shoulder, pointed it up (toward the ceiling) and fired it,” Doerr testified. “The purpose of that, I think, was to demonstrate to me it was a real rifle and loaded and he meant business.”

Doerr said White told him to go away, so Doerr stepped into a nearby classroom and called 911.

Stephen Gilbreth, Memorial Middle School’s principal, said that when he heard the gunshot he ran out of his office and into the hall where White was standing. Gilbreth said he approached the boy, who was wearing a mask and hood, and repeatedly told him to put the rifle down and leave the building.

Gilbreth said he thought White was trying to fire the gun when the boy repeatedly jabbed the weapon toward the principal. Police later said the rifle jammed because of improper seating of an ammunition clip in the gun.

“The only thing he (White) said the whole time was, ‘Don’t make me do it,’” Gilbreth testified. “He was making a motion with the gun toward me. I thought he was trying to discharge the weapon but I couldn’t be sure.”

Gilbreth said White then headed down some stairs and out of the building, with the principal behind him repeatedly encouraging him to keep walking and leave the school. White stopped once to look back and moved the gun toward Gilbreth, the principal testified.

“I put my hands in my pockets (and) said, ‘I’m not doing anything, bud. Let’s just keep going,’” Gilbreth said.

This is why he needs to be tried as an adult. Clearly, there was an intent to do harm. Only by the grace of God did the gun jam and no one was injured. It’s not like he brought a gun to school to show off to his friends, and it accidentally discharged. If that happened I’d say yeah, try him as a juvenile. But these actions show wanton malice on the part of White.

The max he’s looking at is 49 years. I doubt he’ll get anywhere near that much, but I won’t lose any sleep if he does.

White hearing postponed again:

Thomas White, the 14-year-old gunman in the Memorial Middle School shooting, has had a preliminary hearing postponed because prosecutors have filed additional charges.

Jasper County Assistant Prosecutor Todd Hawkins said after reviewing police records, the prosecutor’s office filed two additional charges against White Monday afternoon – a second first degree assault charge and a felony charge of unlawful use of a weapon.

No word on how much that could potentially add to his sentence.

Mother says Joplin school shooter was bullied:

The mother of Thomas White, the Memorial Middle School shooter, is claiming that her son was bullied…

Norma White said that her son would come home with injuries, crying and begging not to be sent back to the school. The Associated Press is not naming the boy because of his age.

“He came home once limping; he had been kicked by an older kid in the halls,” she said. “He came home once with a huge welt on his head from someone slamming his locker door on his head when they passed him in the hall. His hand was injured once too.”

“He did suffer from bullying. He would come home crying, begging us not to send him back to school.”

While I can definitely empathize, it’s still no reason to bring a MAC-90 to school.

Mrs. White is placing a lot of the blame on herself…

Norma White did not directly blame the shooting on the bullying.

But she said she now wishes she had done more to raise the problem with school officials.

White spoke to her son’s teachers about the problem only a couple of times – during parent-teacher conferences – but never made a formal complaint to the administration. She said she advised her son to tell his teachers, but he often insisted nothing would be done about it.

It also didn’t help that White had such easy access to the guns that White’s father wasn’t supposed to have anyway.