Texas police kill 8th-grader carrying pellet gun:
Eighth Grader Shot By Cops Had Pellet Gun:
Parents of student killed by police say death was needless:
Yesterday, police in Brownsville, Texas shot and killed 15-year-old Jaime Gonzalez in the halls of Cummings Middle School. Gonzalez was said to be brandishing a weapon at police and refused to relinquish the weapon. After the smoke cleared, it turned out that the weapon in question was a pellet gun. While this is most certainly a tragic loss, and it will hurt some people to hear this, but police did their job.
The school called police reporting a student with a gun that sent the school into lockdown. According to reports, Gonzalez pointed the weapon at officers and was given ample opportunity to relinquish the weapon. When he didn’t, police had no choice but to shoot him.
People are already asking why police had to use lethal force. Take a look at the picture above. If someone drew that on you, would you be able to tell if the gun was real or not? It looks pretty real to me. People will say, why couldn’t the police have shot him in the arm or leg. To be blunt, that is TV bullshit. In reality, police are trained to aim at center mass to bring down an assailant. Even if they were able to shoot the suspect in the arm or leg, that can still kill you if the bullet were to strike one of the major arteries.
The bigger question should be what was the gun doing in the school in the first place. The words gun and school haven’t gone together in a very long time, whether it be pellet, nerf or even squirt.
If any of this sounds even remotely familiar to you, it may be because it sounds almost identical to the story of Christopher Penley. In 2006, he took a pellet gun to Milwee Middle School in Florida and used it to take another student hostage in the middle of class before also engaging police. The results were the same. Later on, the shooting had been ruled lawful and lawsuits against police and the school were dismissed. What you may not know is that the officer who pulled the trigger was so devastated that he left the police force for good.
Do you really think that the two officers who shot Jaime Gonzalez took pleasure in doing what they had to do? I can guarantee you they did not. They did what they were trained to do. They assessed a threat and took appropriate action. I doubt these officers will ever be the same, but no one really cares about that, do they?
UPDATE 8/11/2012: Grand jury rules that Brownsville police did not commit a criminal act when they shot and killed Gonzalez.
Real Crime with Trench Reynolds 
I think Jamie was bullied, and he just snapped. “Jeremy” moment. 😦 Suicide by cop. Why else would he walk up to a certain student and wop him in the nose? “No good reason ” My ass. Kid was bullied plain and simple. (Marching Band “nerds” usually are.. 😦 take it from me)
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In my opinion we are too quick to throw the bullying concept out there when something like this happens.
In the majority of American school shootings where bullying is an alleged factor in most cases the shooters turn out to be bullies themselves. I refer to this as the Columbine bullying myth.
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I do see your point. My past perceptions of being a bullied marching band kid might be clouding it. It does scream of “Suicide by cop” to me though. I hope that you will post a follow up of this story when there is new developments. Like anyone coming clean to weather this kid was either a douchebag or a bullied kid just lashing out.
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Of course. Follow ups will be forthcoming.
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Oh my god, Trench, I swear you read my thoughts long before I even thought them.
This bullying myth has got to stop. It’s doing absolutely NOTHING productive except making everyone AFRAID of bullying victims rather than actually trying to help them.
Everything I’ve read from the parents makes me wonder if he wasn’t a spoiled, special, psychotic snohflayk who always got out of trouble and only had a clean record thanks to his parents cleaning up after his messes. Or if it was suicide by cop. Or both. Either way, psychopaths can very easily appear charming even to the people closest to them, they’re very manipulative and if one goes crazy…
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Agreed, as I’ve said before school shootings and the like actually take the focus away from bullying and make schools more concerned about who is going to be the next shooter.
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The police were totally justified. If someone points a gun at them, they must act quickly to protect themselves. They have no time to determine if the gun is real. I don’t understand why people are questioning the cops’ reactions.
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Kids need to learn taking a gun to school -any gun- is not OK. If he was bullied, his actions didn’t prove a goddamn thing. If he was just trying to be cool, again didn’t prove anything. I am sad about this, but it’s certainly no fault of the police officers and I feel so sad for them.
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I will have to agree here. My son gets picked on because he is different. Never once has he even hinted that he wanted to harm anyone. However, when he says anything back or other kids get in trouble, THEY threaten him. “shoot”, “stab”, and “kill” are words they’ve used. The bullies are the ones who want to inflict the harm on victims! Once he started bringing a recorder to class because I wanted to hear for myself what these kids were saying and doing, that the teacher was denying. When the teacher found the recorder, the meanest kid in class threatened to shoot him. (Which was not caught on the recording) Because an adult didn’t hear it, ‘it never happened’. Every day I worry more about school shootings at his school than him getting beat up or smacked around. Kids are either verbally mean or they threaten his life.
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I can’t seem to wrap my head around the bullying concept in this case. With gang activity and some forms of music glorifying gang/thug/goon type violence and lifestyle, it’s not surprising that kids are taking guns to school if not just to impress their peers.
The cops did their job and as you said, they will always haunt them mentally.
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Welcome back Scott.
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Thanks. I’ll be back more often.
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