A school district and local prosecutors in Texas are refusing to drop charges against an 11-year-old who was held in solitary confinement.

Timothy Murray lost his father earlier this year and had been asking his principal for counseling when she called in the police

  • FierroGamer@sh.itjust.works
    147·
    11 months ago

    I’ve tried to understand what the charges are, as far as I could tell it seems it’s somehow related to an anti terrorist law and caused by the kid pulling someone’s hair and gesturing to cut paper with scissors, which was interpreted as gesturing to cut a finger.

    The article seems to try very hard to obfuscate the actual reason (I’m guessing for legal reasons?)

    In any case, this seems insane, seems like excessive overreaction from everyone involved.

    • AnneBonny@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      811·
      11 months ago

      The whole thing is weird.

      His ordeal began five days later. In the late morning of September 8, Timothy was pulled out of music class and ushered into a room where he found Garza, Assistant Principal Michelle Saucedo, a district police officer, and a counselor sent from the district’s central administrative office. He was told another student had just reported that Timothy said he was planning to kill the principal. Rincon said she was called and rushed to the school but was not allowed to be in the room while Timothy was being questioned.

      “When the police officer had his body cam off, they were yelling and telling me, ‘We’re gonna go to the full extent. We’re gonna put you in a lockbox,’” Timothy said. “Then, when the body cam was finally on, they were so nice.”

      Timothy told me he had explained to the school and district officials that the accusations were not true, that the only conversation he had that morning was with two other boys about wearing his sweater over his uniform.

      Rincon has received only a school conduct referral form, on which administrators wrote that “Timothy told another student that his hair was messy because he was up all night to come up with a plan to kill Mrs. Garza (principal).” Underneath, Timothy wrote: “No I was not up all night I just forgot [to comb my hair].”

      On the bottom of the form, administrators had written: “OSS [out-of-school suspension] 3 days 9/11-9/13.”

      https://www.texasobserver.org/why-was-this-11-year-old-honor-roll-student-put-in-solitary/

      • Empricorn@feddit.nlEnglish
        651·
        11 months ago

        Not the point of this article/topic but why is law enforcement required to wear body cameras but they can turn them off whenever they want!? That’s asking for abuse! Unless they’re using the restroom (and even then I’d lean towards an independent reviewer deleting footage, if anyone). These are public servants on-the-clock! If there’s no enforcement, there’s no consequences to purposely deactivating the taxpayer-funded camera they’re supposed to be operating under…

      • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
        41·
        11 months ago

        So it started with a kid who made up a really tall tale, told it to an adult in the form of completely unsubstantiated hearsay, which the admins for some mysterious reason chose to belief. Those admins must be either stupid or malicious.

        I’m leaning towards maliciousness, jealousy and spite as the most likely reasons for why this is happening.

    • AmberPrince@kbin.social
      55·
      11 months ago

      I thought the same thing. Here’s the archived Texas Observer article on it, which is what this article’s source seems to be.

      Apparently the principal heard from another student that this kid was “making threats” against her. Sounds pretty thin to me.

    • Murais@lemmy.one
      17·
      11 months ago

      Unless the kid brained someone with a tee ball trophy, I categorize this penalty in the “extreme” category.