The death of 15-year-old Jaime Gonzalez has shaken this neighborhood along the U.S.-Mexico border, where parents already burdened by economic woes and street gangs are now faced with explaining the tragedy to their children.
Making it especially hard: It remains unclear to his parents and investigators why Jaime — a drum major who danced in his church’s annual religious festival, stayed out of gangs and had two parents who closely watched him — could swerve off course and bring a weapon to school. The weapon, police later determined, was a pellet gun.
His parents have lamented police for their actions Wednesday, saying they could have taken non-lethal action. But there was broad agreement among law enforcement experts: If a suspect raises a weapon and refuses to put it down, officers are justified in shooting to kill.
Brownsville interim Police Chief Orlando Rodriguez defended his officers, saying the boy pointed the pellet gun — which was black and resembled a real gun — at police and repeatedly defied their commands to put it on the floor.
Rodriguez said the preliminary autopsy report showed the boy was shot twice in the torso. Family members initially thought he was shot in the back of the head, but that wound turned out to be a cut from a fall.
“It really doesn’t change anything at all,” his father, Jaime Gonzalez Sr., said after being told of the preliminary autopsy results at the vigil for his son. “If it is a wound from his fall, why shoot him at all? Wound him. Do something else. Use another method.”
In a recording released Thursday of the 911 call from the school, the assistant principal says a student in the hall has a gun, then reports that he is drawing the weapon and finally that he is running down the hall.
Police can be heard yelling: “Put the gun down! Put it on the floor!” In the background, someone else yells, “He’s saying that he is willing to die.”
Before police arrived, school administrators had urged Jaime to give up the gun. When officers got to the school, the boy was waiting for them, Rodriguez said.
Moments before he was killed, Jaime began to run down a hallway, but again faced officers. Police fired down the hallway — a distance that made a stun gun or other methods impractical, Rodriguez said.
If the situation had involved hostages or a gunman barricaded in a room, police might have tried negotiations. But instead, Rodriguez stressed, this was an armed student roaming the halls of a school.
The two officers who fired have been placed on administrative leave — standard procedure in police shootings. Rodriguez expected them back at work soon.
Jaime’s father has said he didn’t know where his son got the pellet gun. Police believed it was a gift, and a friend of the boy’s said Jaime told her that but she didn’t know who gave it to him.
*Full article can be found here. http://news.yahoo.com/texas-school-shooting-many-questions-loom-234525229.html
Comments: How can the parents be outraged when their son brings a gun (a pellet gun is still a gun and able to shoot and kill) to school and the police shoot after repeated requests for the boy to disarm himself. I can only imagine the rumors which ran rampant throughout the night at the school, much like how the parents believed that he was shot in the back of the head due to some blood. Though I feel sorry for the family’s loss, the parents have no right to be angry at the police when he brandished a lethal weapon and refused to disarm. Though there we see many cases of corruption among the ranks of the police, I doubt many of them had to desire to shoot and kill a child.
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