School suspends boys for playing with toy guns in their own yard

Khalid Caraballo was playing with a friend in his front yard waiting for the school bus to pull up to a stop about 70 yards away.

The two were firing an airsoft gun at a target when a neighbor saw them and called 911.

“It looks like he has like, a target or something, like a tree right in front of his yard,” the caller says.

The same caller tells the 911 operator she knows the boys are playing with a toy gun but she believes they are shooting at kids near the bus stop.

That led to an investigation that ended with Khalid and Aidan both suspended from school with the recommendation that they be expelled. That despite the fact the boys were on private property.

The school says the two violated the rule prohibiting “possession, handling and use of a firearm.”

In this case school rules do list spring loaded weapons as a firearm  and they say the boys “shot two other friends who were with them while playing” with the guns.

WAVY-TV  reports the boys admitted to playing in the yard but when they were asked if the toy gun ever went to school Khalid responded quickly "no, sir."

Khalid’s Caraballo’s mother Angel was mad for two reasons. She thinks the Virginia Beach school overreacted and Khalid broke a rule by using the gun in the front yard.

But she points out “he disobeyed me but that’s a home issue and he won’t be doing it again.”

The school says they have a zero tolerance policy and a final decision on expulsion will come this week.

More here.