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| Student charged with felony for bringing Airsoft gun to school |
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Posted: Monday, November 16, 2009 11:43 am
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By DREW AMO
Staff Writer
JANESVILLE — A Janesville teen has been charged with one felony count of brandishing a dangerous weapon on school property after an incident back in September.
Joseph Gary Weber, 16, was also charged with gross misdemeanor possession of a dangerous weapon on school property.
Another juvenile was also charged in this incident, but since the accused is under the age of 16, court records are not available.
Just after 8 a.m. on Sept. 21, Janesville Police Chief David Ulmen received a phone call from a resident who lives across from the school.
According to the resident, a couple of male students from the high school were in the parking lot and were pointing a rifle at other kids as they were entering the school.
According to the criminal complaint, both the resident and his wife were concerned because they did not know if it was a real gun. While on the phone the resident witnessed one of the males put the rifle back in the vehicle and cover it with some type of blanket. The resident also provided a description of the vehicle.
Ulmen responded to the area and found a vehicle that matched the description given by the resident.
At this time there were no individuals around the vehicle and Ulmen could not see a weapon inside, although he did notice a light colored blanket in the back seat.
Ulmen spoke with a school administrator about the situation. The driver of the vehicle, who is a student at the high school, was called to the office.
According to the complaint, Ulmen told the student why he was there and asked him if he had a firearm in his vehicle. The student said he had an Airsoft rifle in the vehicle. When asked if he had the rifle out of the vehicle and if he had been pointing them at others, the student initially said he had not.
Ulmen went out to the vehicle and the school administrator and the student followed shortly after.
According to the complaint, the school administrator told Ulmen that the student had indicated he had shot another student with the air soft rifle. The other student was a friend and had asked the student to shoot him to see what it was like.
The student retrieved the rifle from the back of the vehicle to show Ulmen.
According to the complaint, the air soft rifle looked exactly like an AR-15/A-2 assault rifle and the details were nearly exactly that of a real assault rifle.
The school administrator and the student went back into the school while Ulmen secured the rifle.
When he returned, Ulmen learned from the administrator that there were two students who had been shot with the air soft rifle, a 14-year-old and a 17-year-old.
Ulmen spoke with the 14-year-old who said he had asked the student to shoot him. He said he was hit in the backpack and was not injured, but admitted this was the wrong thing to do at school.
Ulmen then spoke to the 17-year-old, who said he was on his way to school when he saw the other boys standing by the vehicle.
According to the complaint, the student handed Weber the air soft rifle, who pointed it at the 17-year-old and shot at him, hitting him in the strap of his backpack. The 17-year-old said he was not expecting Weber to shoot him, but he was not injured.
When Ulmen spoke to Weber, he said that the student had called him on his cell phone and told him to come over to his vehicle because he wanted to show him his new Airsoft rifle.
Weber said the student took the rifle out of the vehicle and they were standing around with it when the 14-year-old came over and asked the student to shoot him with the Airsoft rifle, which he did.
Weber admitted that he knew this behavior was wrong to do at school.
The student explained to Ulmen that he had just recently obtained the air soft rifle and had brought it to school to show his friends. Ulmen asked if the Airsoft rifle had some sort of orange tip on the muzzle as most replica firearms are manufactured in that manner.
According to the complaint, the student said the muzzle was orange when he purchased it, but he had spray-painted it black to make it look real.
On Sept. 28, Ulmen conducted a test fire of the air soft rifle in the police station garage using 6 MM air soft pellets.
According to the complaint, Ulmen fired several shots from the rifle from 18 feet away from the closed garage door. At this range, the pellets hit the inside of the door with enough force to cause dents in the interior skin of the door. Also, after hitting the garage door, there was enough energy to cause the air soft pellet to ricochet back the entire 18 feet.
Weber is scheduled to appear in court on Dec. 14.
Drew Amo can be reached at 837-5451 or damo@janesvilleargus.com |
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Guidelines: Welcome to the Waseca County News community. Please keep your comments civil. Don't attack other readers personally and keep your language decent. We reserve the right to delete comments at any time.
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Member Opinions:
By: jonah.g on 3/1/10
Wow, I'm still not done ranting. I noticed how red neck or stupid Ulmen must be to make his own super test. How about he shoots himself in the hand or something and really see what it feels like? I wouldn't mind giving him a lesson about the dangers of an AEG. So, like in court, if the judge asks if the gun is dangerous, would officer Ulmen stand up and be like, "Yeah, uh, I shot it, uh, with those small projectilers, uh, and then, uh, it like hit the wall, uh, and it bounced back, and uh, I was like WOH, because it surpised me, uh, that plastic, uh, tends to ricoshe(however u spell it) easily" It's crazy this new world we live in. Its like Reno 911 :/
By: jonah.g on 3/1/10
Oh, I forgot to thank Drew for not caring about confidentiallity. I'm sure that other kid is lucky that he is under 16 so you couldn't get your grimy hands on his file aren't ya?
By: jonah.g on 3/1/10
I really hate how this online news operation here works. I mean come on. In some situations, just because you "can" report it, doesn't mean you "should." I feel bad for this kid. Wouldn't you be hurt if your mistake was flushed around the internet/neighborhood for everyone to see/comment/and judge? Media and partially law are corrupted by their desire to keep us all under control. They try to do this by not caring if they partially destory the future of a teen to give example to the rest of the community. By the way, for all you airsoft lover's such as myself. These safty links that people under me are showing are nice. But don't buy an airsoft gun from airsplat. Go to airsoftgi.com or evike.com . I bought a full metal mp5-a4 from airsoftgi. Great advertising and very well designed website.
By: embarassmenttothecom on 11/20/09
Abu13B, Could it have been more about "ignorant" than about "stupid"? Educating kids about other such incidents (so they can learn from other people's mistakes) can fix ignorance.
By: MomB on 11/20/09
WHO PAYS FOR THE GARAGE DOOR? Are you kidding Me ? Jeeze!!
By: Abu13B on 11/19/09
yeah, clearly what these kids did was stupid. they probably weren't old enough to remember columbine or jonesboro, AK. but i do quite vividly actually. i mean, i got in trouble for even having a gun on my shirt and it was a US Army Infantry t-shirt, our deans threw a fit. tell me thats not rediculous. anyways, so schools are the last place an airsoft gun should be. airsoft should be saved for the airsoft/paintball fields. because of the realism (which adds to the appeal), police react appropriately when they see one of these toys in public. you really need to have some common sense when it comes to airsoft..... www.airsplat.com/airsoft-safety.htm maybe if they read something like that, this whole thing could have been avoided.
By: embarassmenttothecom on 11/19/09
Mudd, you might think that "In this day and age everyone knows you don't bring anything to school that even looks like a gun." Why, then, did these kids (all of them involved), give so little thought to what they were doing? I agree with you, that it will do no one any good for society to hang a life-long felony record around any of these kids' necks.
By: Mudd on 11/18/09
Who the hell is worried about the garage door, Chief Ulman was not shooting a .357 at this door, this thing shoots plastic pellets. In this day and age everyone knows you don't bring anything to school that even looks like a gun. I just hope this mess can be cleaned up without this young man having a felony on his record. What he did was wrong, does he need a felony to follow him the rest of his life, I don't think so.
By: Myra34 on 11/17/09
Who cares about the garage door? No one said it was being replaced, just that the "gun" made a small dent in the metal. A felony for having an airsoft gun? Aren't those guns MADE to shoot at one another? Kind of like paintball guns?
By: irishparent02 on 11/17/09
I agree with flounder; who's paying for the new garage door? Couldn't this have easily been used somewhere else to test using a target? Ulmen used poor judgement testing in a city owned garage. Then again, he must not care what his actions cause taxpayers.
By: flounder on 11/16/09
Who pays for the new garage door?
By: mrclm on 11/16/09
Oh how I miss the days where everyone might lose and eye, and we all ran with scissors in traffic while wearing dirty underwear...
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