11-year-old Virginia student suspended for waiting 2 hours to anonymously report classmate brought bullet to school

A Catholic school has punished an 11-year-old boy for supposedly taking too long to report a classmate for having a bullet in his possession at school, The Washington Post reported.

School officials at St. John the Apostle Catholic School in Virginia Beach suspended the sixth-grade student for one-and-a-half days because he waited for two hours before making his report, according to Tim Anderson, a lawyer representing the boy and his mother, Rachel Wigand.

School officials argued that the boy was punished because it can be disastrous to detect a potential crisis and delay telling anyone, as they referred to the recent school shooting in Georgia where the mother of the 14-year-old boy reportedly warned the school of an "extreme emergency" before the attack occurred. Suspect Colt Gray is accused of carrying out the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, where he allegedly killed four individuals and injured another nine.

But lawyer Anderson contended that if you punish a student for “doing the right thing” even if he waited to do so, it discourages other students from flagging a potential crisis. “The message it sends is, instead of ‘See something, say something,’ the kids are better off not saying anything,” Anderson told The Post, adding that “it’s creating a more dangerous environment.”

The Catholic Diocese of Richmond, of which St. John’s is a part, issued a statement defending its actions. “The school’s culture of safety requires that students and adults alike report potential threats as quickly as they are made aware of them; in a real emergency, gaps in reporting time — especially hours-long gaps — could have major consequences for school safety,” the diocese wrote.

The incident began very simply on the morning of Sept. 5 when Wigand’s son’s class was asked to rearrange their desks in preparation for a standardized test. During the move, one of the boy’s classmates produced a bullet that Wigand later learned the student had found in a coin jar belonging to his parents. Wigand was insistent that her son did not think his friend was threatening anyone with the bullet.

Nonetheless, the boy was apparently shocked but wanted to anonymously report having seen the bullet. So he decided to complete the test, an exercise that took 90 minutes to complete. Then he went to his art class, which was also attended by the boy with the bullet. The boy finally found the opportunity to relay his information about the bullet as he visited the interim principal, Jennifer Davey, and talked to her.

Police soon arrived at the school and found the bullet. Although the principal commended the boy for his actions, he suspended him because he had been tardy in making his report. The boy in possession of the bullet also received an identical suspension of one-and-a-half days.

Wigand said when her son reported to her that the school had decided to punish him, she was suspicious that she hadn’t heard the whole story. “There’s no way somebody would suspend you for reporting something,” she said of her feelings upon hearing her son recount his story. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Wigand consulted with the principal at a school open house that same night and even read through a copy of a student handbook, which indicated the only thing a student was bound to report to school authorities is sexual harassment. She is now demanding that the suspension be revoked and if it is not, Wigand’s lawyer told the Post that the mother is preparing to sue the school.