(VitalNews.org) – A 10-year-old boy from Chicago was detained by police and taken to the hospital to be observed after threatening himself and officers with a gun. The unnamed child reportedly lashed out after being asked by his mother to help with housework, according to his grandfather, who described him as a “bad boy”.
Police officers arrived at the Beverly neighborhood home at 11:20 am on Monday, July 24th, to find the boy on the porch, brandishing a gun. The tense scene saw the neighborhood briefly placed on lockdown but was over too quickly for officers to be able to call a negotiator to the scene. He pointed the gun at his own head multiple times, as well as threatening officers with it during a fraught standoff which saw the boy firing a single bullet in the direction of the officers. The shot did not hit anybody, and police were able to de-escalate the situation without firing live ammunition.
Taking the boy’s young age into account, as well as his apparently fragile mental state, officers fired beanbag rounds at the house in an attempt to make the boy surrender. When this did not work, they fired pepper spray at the porch where the boy had stationed himself. This proved successful and the child threw his gun to the ground and gave himself up without any injury, allowing police to detain him and get him to hospital for observation.
Thurston Daniels, the boy’s grandfather, explained that the boy had become angry at his mother for asking him to help around the house, and had been able to snatch the gun from her handbag. Chicago Alderman Matt O’Shea confirmed that the gun was owned legally but had not been secured safely in the home. He asked that anybody keeping a weapon in their home should be careful about how they store it in order to avoid incidents such as this one.
It is not clear yet what charges, if any, will be filed.
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