A Marion County sheriff’s deputy was called to an Ocala elementary school Wednesday morning following reports of one third-grader threatening to shoot another one.
The assistant principal at Sunrise Elementary School, located at 375 Marion Oaks Crse., told the deputy that a third-grader went to his teacher and said that another student had threatened him. The student said that he had been asked a question and after answering it, he shouted out, “I got it right!” Another student then called him a racial epithet and “said that he would shoot him,” a sheriff’s office report states.
The third-grade teacher said the student admitted to making the statement. And she added that an 8-year-old girl sitting nearby heard the racial epithet but not the threat, the report says.
When asked about the incident by the deputy and the assistant principal, the student admitted to using the racial epithet but denied making the shooting threat. He said the only reason he admitted to making the statement to his teacher was “because he wanted her to stop asking” him about it. And he said his mother doesn’t own a gun and he doesn’t have access to a weapon, the report states.
The assistant principal contacted the Department of Children and Families and was told the agency wouldn’t be filing a report. After several failed attempts were made to contact the student’s mother, the deputy asked to have another deputy visit the student’s home, but he reported back that no one was there and he would continue to try to make contact with the mother.
The deputy then made contact with a sheriff’s sergeant who said she would continue to send night shift units to the boy’s home to attempt to make contact with his mother. The deputy also planned to notify the sheriff’s office’s crisis intervention specialist about the incident. And it was decided that the school would handle the disciplinary action against the student.