Child Punished After Finding Toy Gun At Bus Stop
February 2, 2005
Tuesday morning, a boy waiting for the bus to Oakwood Manor Elementary School, in the North Kansas City School District, dug up what he thought was a gun in the ground.
"It came out real fast. I got a good look at it. It really was a gun. Thank God it was a toy gun," 10-year-old Frasier McCart said.
Frasier wouldn't find out it was a toy until later. He said when he first found it, he wanted to make sure nobody got hurt. Just before the bus arrived at the corner, he put the gun in his backpack so that he could give it to school officials.
"I was thinking, 'I'll give it to the principal, she'll know what to do,'" Frasier said.
"It did look like a real gun," Principal Marla Wasserman said.
She said the boy had good intentions, but while making his way through the hallway to her office, he told another student what he had in his backpack. Wasserman said the boy should not have told another student. The boy's mother said he was then suspended. The principal said she then gave him in-school disciplinary action.
School officials said that McCart's action could have earned him an extended out-of-school suspension, but he will remain in school for the corrective action.
"I'm sitting here wondering, 'Why? What'd I do?' I did the right thing," Frasier said.
His mother is also disappointed.
"It's hard to find somebody that can be honest and do the right thing," said Tracy Johnson. "And to punish him for doing the right thing, that just doesn't paint a pretty picture."
