MOUNT MORRIS TOWNSHIP, Mich. — A first-grade classroom became the latest bloodstained stage in the nation's rash of school shootings Tuesday as a 6-year-old boy pointed a gun at a classmate and then fired. The 6-year-old girl crumpled to the floor, fatally wounded.
Officials in this working-class community 60 miles north of Detroit were investigating reports that the two children had quarreled on the playground at Buell Elementary School on Monday. Relatives identified the dead girl as Kayla Rolland.
Unsure whether the shooting was planned or accidental, police sought to find out how he obtained the weapon.
The boy's father is serving time in the county jail, and the boy lived with his mother, a man referred to as an uncle and a younger sibling, Genesee County Prosecutor Arthur A. Busch said. He didn't know what the father was charged with.
"We want to get to the bottom of how that gun got into that little boy's hands--who had that gun and where it was left," Busch said.
Those are the sort of tangible, evidentiary questions that emerge each time a quiet campus is riven by gunfire. But the question of why is especially haunting this time, because of the age of the suspect and his victim.
The boy, whose name was not disclosed by authorities, was questioned by police and released Tuesday evening. Police officials would not say where he was sent, but earlier in the day, Police Chief Eric King said the youth would be put into the custody of the state child welfare agency.
Despite Michigan's toughening of statutes to allow authorities to pursue adult prosecutions of children, American common law virtually rules out the possibility of establishing criminal intent in those so young.
"Obviously, he has done a very terrible thing today, but legally, he can't be held criminally responsible," the prosecutor said.
Police will look hard at filing criminal negligence charges against any adult culpable in letting the gun fall into the boy's hands. Manslaughter, punishable by a 15-year jail term, is one possible charge if adult involvement is proved, Busch said.
Students in another first-grade class nearby did not hear the loud report from the gun. Darnisha Bristol--who lives down the street from Buell Elementary--said her 6-year-old son, Cornell, was oblivious until he saw his teacher head for the classroom door just after 10 a.m. "The first sign that anything was wrong," she said, "was when his teacher locked their door."
