A 5-year-old Massachusetts boy received a disciplinary warning from school officials after building a gun out of Legos.
Joseph Cardosa’s parents received the letter from Hyannis West Elementary School officials after their son built the “gun” during an after-school program. If it happened again, the letter said, Joseph would be suspended.
“It’s not like he’s designing a machine gun,” dad Octavio Cardosa told Fox 25 in Boston.
School safety continues to be a sensitive issue six weeks after 20 kids were shot to death by Adam Lanza in Newtown, Conn. Recently a student carrying a nerf gun caused a panic at a Bronx elementary school, and a Philadelphia fifth grader who brought a paper gun to class was searched by school officials and harassed by classmates.
And it wasn’t the first incident involving fake guns for little Joseph. His parents were notified by school officials a few weeks ago when he used his fingers to pretend to shoot a gun, according to Fox 25.
“I can understand with all the things that are going on right now in schools,” mom Shelia Cruz told Fox 25, “but on the other hand, kids are taught you know ‘here’s a squirt gun, this is fun,’ so this is fun to him, you know what I mean, he’s running around playing – a little bit of re-direction would have been enough.”
Principal Kathi Amato defended the warning, telling Fox 25 that “while someone might think that making a Lego gun is just an action of a 5-year-old, to other 5-year-olds, that might be a scary experience.”
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