(ETH) – A Colorado school district has considered suspending a 12-year-old boy who carried out the horrific crime of touching a toy gun during a virtual class.
The incident so terrified people that school officials were prompted to actually call police officers to come visit the child’s home for a welfare check. According to more detail from Buzzfeed News, Isaiah Elliott, who was a seventh-grader at Grand Mountain School in Colorado Springs, Colorado, was reportedly participating in an online art class on Aug. 27th when he absentmindedly picked up a neon green toy gun and “moved it from one side of his computer to the other.”
The boy’s mother stated that she received an email that very day from the child’s art teacher who said Isaiah — who suffers from ADHD and has an IEP on file with the school — was “extremely distracted” during the day’s lesson.
The teacher who wishes to remain unnamed reportedly complained that there had been a “very serious issue with the 12-year-old waving around his toy gun.” The teacher admitted that she reported the incident to the school’s vice-principal.
After the mother received a phone call from the school’s vice-principal, she was told a police officer was on the way to her home to conduct a health and wellness check on Isaiah in the family’s home. “I had already explained to the teacher that it was a toy,” she said. “I told [the vice principal] that it was a toy. She admitted that she knew it was a toy, but Isaiah’s safety was of the utmost importance.”
The next part of this story gets even more interesting. According to the report, El Paso County Sheriff’s officers arrived at their home to carry out the wellness check and revealed the footage of the online classroom incident to the Elliotts.
It is then Isaiah’s mother stated that she was very concerned — and it wasn’t because her son was playing with a toy gun, but because the school was recording the virtual classes without informing parents.
Shortly after the incident, the school shared an update on Facebook regarding the situation insisting that there were “several inaccuracies being spread on social media” about “an incident that took place during distance learning.
“We never have or ever will condone any form of racism or discrimination,” the statement said. “Safety will always be number one for our students and staff.” The school also insisted that they were recording virtual classes to refine their practice of distance learning. “During our first week of school, we were still becoming familiar with the platform,” the school said in its Facebook statement.
