Section A · Page 7
The University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, March 1, 2000
Nation/World
First-grader shoots classmate
Six-year-old kills girl in school classroom
MOUNT MORRIS TOWNSHIP, Mich. — A 6-year-old boy shot a little girl to death in their first-grade classroom yesterday, a day after they may have scuffled on the playground.
The Associated Press
In a school shooting made especially shocking by the age of the youngsters, the boy fired a bullet from a 32-caller gun inside Buell Elementary near Flint, 60 miles from Detroit, striking his 6-year-old classmate in the neck. She died a half-hour later.
It was unclear whether the shooting was accidental or intentional.
The boy was taken into the custody of the state child welfare agency
It was thicker whether the shooting was accidental or intentional. Prosecutors did not say how they thought he got the gun, though they said it had been reported stolen in December and was in the boy's home.
President Clinton said he was told the boy's brother gave him the weapon.
Regardless of what the investigation reveals, it may be impossible to bring charges against the boy, Genesee County Prosecutor Arthur A. Busch said. But he said someone might face charges for enabling the boy to obtain the gun.
"There is a presumption in law that a child ... is not criminally responsible and can't form an intent to kill. Obviously, he has done a very terrible thing today, but legally, he can't be held criminally responsible," the prosecutor said. "We will get to the bottom of how that gun got into that little boy's hands."
About 500 children attend Buell Elementary, which is in an area of neat, small single-family homes. Other parts of the Flint suburb, which has a population of about 25,300, are more run down, with dilapidated homes and boarded up storefronts.
pupils were in the classroom preparing to leave when the shooting occurred. The teacher was standing in the doorway when the boy, who had the gun tucked in his pants, pointed it at a pupil, Busch said. The boy then turned toward the girl and fired the only bullet in the gun, the prosecutor said.
The boy ran into a bathroom and dropped the gun into a trash can, Busch said. School personnel held the boy until authorities arrived.
Third-grader Corey Sutton, 9, said he heard a bang and thought a desk had fallen. Then, the principal came on the P.A. system and told teachers to shut their doors and lock them. "I was scared; my heart was pounding," he said.
The teacher told students to line up and get their coats on, and when the kids were lined up she told students what had happened.
The names of the two youngsters were not released.
U.S. teens jailed in Germans' deaths
DARMSTADT, Germany — With thousands of U.S. military personnel in Germany, police are used to deal with the occasional Army brat who runs a red light or lifts beer from a supermarket.
The Associated Press
But three teen-age Americans who reportedly spent their nights hurling rocks at cars from a pedestrian bridge are facing something far more serious — murder charges for the deaths of two drivers.
The community was on edge yesterday as tabloids blared demands for justice, and military families worried about anti-American backlash.
The three teens, whose names were withheld by authorities, were arrested Monday by German and U.S. military police at the U.S.
Army's Lincoln housing area near Darmstadt, a sleepy suburb of 140.000 just south of Frankfurt.
Darmstadt police said the three confessed to hurling volleyball-sized stones — some weighing 20 pounds — late Sunday from a pedestrian bridge at cars on the four-lane highway underneath.
They had met regularly for the last four to six weeks to do so, developing a "tradition," police said. But things turned deadly Sunday, when stones shattered the windshields of two passing cars, striking their drivers in the head and killing them.
The boys allegedly threw stones at four other cars, injuring five more people. One of those killed, a 41-year old mother of two, was on her way to the train station to pick up her husband. The second victim was a 20-year-old Darmstadt woman riding
with her grandparents. Both the grandparents were injured.
A German judge ruled yesterday that the boys — ages 14, 17 and 18 — will sit behind bars until the prosecutor officially charges them with murder and causing an accident with intent, which could take weeks.
In Washington, the Pentagon said it had no statistics on murder charges against dependents of U.S. military members. But such cases have been rare.
U. S. Defense Secretary William Cohen called his German counterpart, Rudolf Scharping, to express regret and condolences to the families of the victims, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said. He said Scharping assured Cohen that the incident would not have an impact on U.S.-German relations.
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