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this is so sad, but the boy pulled a gun that looked real. training says you shoot to kill when a weapon is trained on you.

The father and brother of a teenager shot at school Friday while brandishing a pellet gun told authorities before an officer opened fire that Christopher Penley's gun was not real, the family's attorney said Saturday.

FULL STORY

lady cop wrote: this is so sad, but the boy pulled a gun that looked real. training says you shoot to kill when a weapon is trained on you.

The father and brother of a teenager shot at school Friday while brandishing a pellet gun told authorities before an officer opened fire that Christopher Penley's gun was not real, the family's attorney said Saturday.

FULL STORY


This is all over the news because it happened so close to here. It such a sad story. The teen is clinically brain dead, but they are keeping him on advanced life support in order to preserve his organs - his family wants to donate them. Very, very sad.

Wow LC, I read the story. An out of control kid, with a pellet gun in his backpack! You can not blame the SWAT team, he threatened the whole class. That is why schools have rules about even toy guns not being allowed at school! I have been on the other end trying to get a knife out a student's hand during a fight-and if a teacher doesn't try to intervene we can get in trouble! In my hallway, we have 2 pregnant teachers, I am the designated go get 'em when there is a fight, and that is understandable. I would do it if it was a gun too, and we have had them at my middle school-fully loaded too. Parents need to tell their children guns are not toys and there are consequences for playing with them, and taking them to school.

unfortunately, toy guns look real. i blame the toy makers. this is not the first time this has happened. if i am confronted with anybody with a gun i am going to shoot. and ask questions later. we've had a few kids down here shoot and kill teachers. they find them at home and take them to school. did you see that video a few years ago of a kid shooting his teacher? right in the head. dropped him in the hallway.

They do look a lot alike, and apparently this kid had blacked out the bright

orange tip that was supposed to designate it as a toy...

This is so sad. The way the kid was acting, I don't feel the officer had much of a choice. It's too late to wonder about what if. What if they had allowed the father in? I can understand their decision not to because they were trying to keep him safe. Just a sad, sad story all the way around.

This is a terrible tragedy. Such a waste of a young life.

But it does raise questions. The SWAT officer did only what he should have done under the circumstances. But why did the boy want to die anyway?

But my main reaction was to question why we allow manufacturers to produce realistic looking toy weapons. Surely, this should be outlawed. This, I think is the real root of the problem.

It is natural for young boys to imitate conflict in their games. But they should know well before they reach their teens that it is not a good thing to kill for any reason. Even in self-defence, the loss and waste of a life is a tremendous tragedy.

-- Family and friends mourning the loss of a troubled teenager prepared a candlelight vigil Sunday to remember the boy, who died two days after being shot by deputies at his middle school.Christopher Penley, 15, was officially pronounced dead at 4:57 a.m., the Seminole County Sheriff's Office said in a statement posted on its Web site later in the day.

The boy had been described as clinically brain dead Saturday and was kept alive so his organs could be harvested for donation, said Mark Nation, a lawyer for Penley's parents.

"It's just unbelievable to me that he's gone," said Bucky Hurt, a family friend who had been with the boy's father, Ralph Penley, at the hospital. "It's very, very devastating. Good kid, too -- it's a tragedy."

The evening vigil was planned at nearby Landmark Community church to remember Christopher.

Friends and neighbors described the teenager as emotionally troubled, saying he had been bullied at school and had run away from home several times.

On Friday, he was at school with a pellet gun that closely resembled a 9mm handgun when another boy scuffled with him for control of the gun inside a classroom. Christopher was later cornered by sheriff's deputies and a SWAT team in a school bathroom, authorities said.

Seminole County Sheriff Don Eslinger said the boy was suicidal and couldn't be talked into surrendering the weapon. The teenager was shot after he raised the gun at a deputy, Eslinger said.

No one else at the 1,100-student school in suburban Orlando was injured.

Eslinger said it wasn't until after the incident that authorities realized the weapon was only a pellet gun.

But the family's lawyer said Saturday that Ralph Penley had told authorities during the standoff that his son had a pellet gun. Nation said police wouldn't let the father inside when he arrived at the school.

"If Christopher was alive and [Ralph Penley] was able to go into the school, he would've been able to talk him out of it," Nation said. "He did everything he could to avoid this situation."

Friends and neighbors described the teenager as emotionally troubled, saying he had been bullied at school
I think a lot of times that kids who do things like this are trying to get school authorities to listen to them and to stop the bullies. Desperate means call for desperate measures in their eyes. Sad, but true.