BALTIMORE (WJZ) — It was a terrifying afternoon on the playground for two elementary school students in Baltimore City. They were shot with a BB gun…by another student. One mother is outraged over how the school is handling the incident.
Adam May has the exclusive story.
The students weren’t seriously hurt, but now one of them is afraid to go back to school because WJZ has learned the shooter is not being expelled.
School police are investigating a violent incident involving fourth and fifth-graders, hurt during an after-school program on the playground of Collinton Square Charter School in East Baltimore.
“I was holding on the fence and I was talking to the little boy and he pulled out a BB gun and he told us we had 10 seconds to run and he shot me,” said Khalil Oliver. “And he shot another boy named Cameron above the lip.”
Oliver said he was scared.
“They say he had a real gun, too and his mother knows,” Oliver said.
You can imagine why Oliver’s mother is alarmed.
“Hearing the words `shot’ and `son’ in the same sentence, I don’t care if it was a water gun. It didn’t sit right. The first question was, ‘Where were the adults?’” said Tammy Oliver.
It took school police almost 24 hours to interview the boy who was shot. The responding officer told family the shooter is another fifth-grader at the same school. His punishment is a five-day suspension. School officials say the police officer made an error. Their code of conduct requires a suspension of at least 45 days but doesn’t require expulsion.
“I’m afraid to go back to that school,” Oliver said.
“I’m not gonna send him back there,” said Tammy Oliver.
This is Khalil Oliver’s second year in the city school system. He used to attend a Catholic school that was shut down and now his family can’t afford private school tuition.
Oliver’s dream school is simple.
“It would be a lot of science and math,” he said. “They are my two favorite subjects.”
Tammy Oliver is still trying to figure out where and how to educate her children.
School officials are still determining the fifth-grade boy’s final punishment. The principal declined to speak on camera.