A Marion County sheriff’s deputy was called to Sunrise Elementary School in Ocala Thursday after a student was heard talking about bringing a gun to the campus during the school’s “Safe Halloween” event.
The 8-year-old girl told deputies that she overheard the student, a 9-year-old boy, get into an argument a few days earlier with another student and accuse him of cheating at Uno. The girl said the third-grader then became upset and threatened to shoot the other student in the face, a sheriff’s office report says.
The deputy spoke with the third-grader, who said he actually was talking about bringing a Nerf gun to school. He said that his dad owns a gun but he keeps it locked up in a safe inside his truck, the report says.
The child’s mother confirmed that he doesn’t have access to his father’s gun. And she told the deputy that the boy’s father had the gun with him up in Panama City, where he was helping with the Hurricane Michael clean-up effort.
The boy was suspended from the school, located at 375 Marion Oaks Crse., and offered counseling services. The deputy spoke with a representative from the Department of Children and Families, who said she wouldn’t be taking a report. And the sheriff’s office’s Crisis Intervention Specialist Unit was notified of the incident, the report says.