In the latest incident of anti-gun hysteria to erupt in a school setting, officials overseeing a school district in Alabama have expelled a 16-year-old girl for an entire year because she had a water gun at school.
Prior to her yearlong expulsion, the student, Sara Allena “Laney” Nichols, attended Prattville High School Prattville, a town of 35,229 just northwest of Montgomery.
The incident leading to Nichols’s suspension occurred on Friday, January 27, reports the Montgomery Advertiser.
Nichols and her mother, Tara Herring, say the teen girl did not bring the water gun to school. Instead, the mother and daughter claim, a male classmate gave Nichols the water gun to Nichols “as a joke.”
Nichols put the water gun in her backpack, and then in the backseat of her car.
The trouble started for Nichols on the following Tuesday when a concerned student told officials at Prattville High that she saw Nichols with a gun.
School officials found school surveillance camera footage showing Nichols carrying the water gun. The footage does not show Nichols receiving the gun from the male student.
The Autauga County Board of Education expelled Nichols in February. She is banned from entering all schools in the taxpayer-funded school district and from all extracurricular activities.
Herring, the mother, acknowledges that her daughter had the water gun on campus. She also concedes that the water gun was black, which made the plastic toy somewhat easier to mistake for a real gun. At the same time, the mad mother thinks the year-long expulsion is ridiculously severe.
Sassy Liberty