TexasCHLforum.com

Posted on Sat, Oct. 15, 2005





Mom carries gun in school

By Domingo Ramirez Jr. and Kelly Melhart

Star-Telegram Staff Writers


FORT WORTH - A mother has been banned from Keller school district campuses after displaying a handgun at a meeting with a school official about discipline for her child.

The 55-year-old woman was in the assistant principal's office at Park Glen Elementary School when the incident occurred Wednesday morning. No shots were fired, officials said.

The school, at 5100 Glen Canyon Road, is in the Park Glen neighborhood in far north Fort Worth.

The mother was issued a criminal trespass warning Thursday after she was interviewed by a Fort Worth school resource officer, police said. Police and school officials did not release the woman's name.

She is not allowed to pick up her two children from school, district spokesman Jason Meyer said.

Fort Worth police Lt. Dean Sullivan said Friday that an investigation of the incident continues.

Carrying a weapon into a school is a felony in Texas.

If convicted, a person faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

"Though there wasn't any violence or verbal threats associated with the incident, and students and staff were never threatened or in immediate harm, clearly this is a violation of state law," wrote principal Carol Wicker in a letter sent home with students Thursday.

The woman was at the school about 10 a.m. Wednesday to talk to Assistant Principal Martha Beseau Bock about her son, who had received a one-day suspension for an altercation on a school bus, according to Fort Worth police reports.

She walked into Beseau Bock's office and asked her son to leave the room, reports state.

After closing the door, the woman took a handgun and holster from her purse and placed it on a shelf near Beseau Bock, according to reports.

The woman told the assistant principal that she didn't mean to bring it to the office, but that she didn't want to leave it in her car, reports state.

During the interview, Beseau Bock got up from her chair behind her desk and sat between the woman and the handgun, according to the reports.

After a brief meeting, the woman left the office with the gun and walked out of the school with her son, police said.

Beseau Bock then contacted a district administrator who advised her to call the school resource officer, authorities said. Beseau Bock could not be reached to comment Friday.

News of the incident did not alarm parent Gwen Johnigan, who has two children at the school. She was comforted to read in the district's letter that the incident was nonthreatening and that officials had banned the woman from school.

"Until all the questions are answered, I think it is a good thing," Johnigan said.

IN THE KNOW

Where weapons are prohibited

• State law prohibits handguns and other weapons from being carried at schools or on school buses, at polling places, in courts and court offices, at racetracks, and in secured airport areas.

• The law also specifically prohibits handguns from businesses that receive more than half of their revenue from the sale of alcohol for on-premises consumption, and from locations where high school, college or professional sporting events are taking place.

• You may not carry handguns in hospitals or nursing homes, amusement parks, places of worship or at government meetings if signs are posted prohibiting them. Businesses may also post signs prohibiting handguns on their premises based on criminal trespass laws.