8th Grader Tries To Kill

This is a story from Yahoo! News that just got my attention.

LONGWOOD, Fla. - An eighth-grader was shot and wounded by a SWAT team
officer in a school bathroom Friday after he pulled out a pellet gun that
resembled a real weapon and later raised it at a deputy, authorities said.

Sheriff Don Eslinger said the 15-year-old boy brought the gun to Milwee
Middle School in his backpack. Eslinger said two students saw it and one
persuaded the other to report it, causing a scuffle.

The alleged gunman ordered one of the students into a closet, dimmed
the lights and ran from the classroom. He then went around the campus carrying
the weapon, Eslinger said. Deputies eventually isolated him in a restroom, and
the school was evacuated.

Eslinger said negotiators tried unsuccessfully to start a dialogue with
the boy, identified as Christopher David Penley.

"He did not respond," Eslinger said. "He refused to even comment. All
he said was his first name. He did not drop the firearm."

When the boy raised the gun at a deputy, he shot the youth, the sheriff
said. Penley was taken to a hospital, where he was on "advanced life
support," the sheriff said.

"He was suicidal," Eslinger said. "During this standoff, and during the
chase, the student said he was going to kill himself or die." At one point, the
boy held the gun to his own neck.

No one else was injured. The sheriff's office confirmed later that the
weapon was a pellet gun fashioned to look like a 9mm handgun. The tip of
the gun had been painted black, covering brightly colored markings that
would have indicated it was nonlethal.

Investigators did not know why Penley brought the weapon to school. "We
are looking into his past, and all kinds of different issues possibly." Eslinger
said.

Classes were canceled for the rest of the day, and frantic parents
arrived to pick up their children from the 1,100-student public school in
suburban Orlando.

"When I saw the news, I just couldn't believe this was my
daughter's school. I came right away," said Anil Santos, whose daughter,
Aleister, is in eighth grade.

Sarah Tivy, 12, said some students were frightened, but she appeared
calm. "I just figured that if someone is going to bring a gun to school, then
they need to be taken out of school," she said.

Kelly Swofford, a neighbor whose 11-year-old son is close friends with
Penley, said he visited their home Thursday night and complained that "people
were picking on him at school. I told him he needed to talk to his guidance
counselor."

Her son Jeffery said Penley talked about wanting to die when the two
had breakfast Friday morning. He said Penley had been fighting with another boy,
allegedly over a girl.

"Everybody knew they were going to fight," Jeffery said. "I heard a rumor that he had a BB gun, but I didn't think he really had one."

Phone calls to Penley's home were not answered Friday, and a person who
answered the door declined to comment.

As dusk fell, Marie Hargis stood in front of the school with a sign that read "Stop the
violence." Her 14-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter attend Milwee.

"My youngest daughter is just very emotionally messed up. She started crying and said, `Mommy, I don't want to go back.' They should not fear having
to go to school."

When I was in 8th Grade all I could think about was the pudding I spilled on my new blue jeans in the lunch room. I'm in my twenties now and I still can't believe this. Even high school for me wasn't this crazy. Actually now that I think about it, kids brought guns and knives to school just for show but never really tried to use it like they do now. Even the teacher kept a rifle in the drawer.....before he was suspended. And I lived in a good neighborhood.

S.W.A.T. Team shooting a kid? What has this world come to. Has it always been like this or has my eyes been covered with a velvet cloth cloaking my sight from the evils of the world. What's next, the president having oral sex in the oval office? Wait.....