Middle school student charged with felony after pointing finger gun at classmates

A Kansas middle school student is facing felony charges after she formed a gun with her fingers and pretended to shoot her classmates. The Sept. 18 incident at Westridge Middle School in Overland Park ended with a young girl, age 12 or 13, being led away in handcuffs, The Kansas City Star reported. The girl was asked by another classmate who’d she kill in the school, to which the girl responded by pointing her finger gun at four other classmates and then turning it on herself, a person familiar with the situation told The Star. An individual who felt threatened used the school’s online anti-bullying app to alert administrators, an Overland Park police spokesperson told NBC News in a statement Friday. School officials conducted an investigation and the girl was arrested by a school resource officer and later released to her mother. The girl was charged with criminal threat, a felony offense, and is due in court Tuesday. “Too often there are reports of violence in schools and inevitably questions about what could or should have been done to prevent the tragedy,” police said, NBC reported. “Threats in schools are taken very seriously and treated appropriately.” Jon Cavanaugh, the girl’s grandfather in California, where the girl is now living, told The Star that his granddaughter had no intention of hurting anyone. “I think that this is something that probably could have been handled in the principal’s office and got completely out of hand,” he said. “She was just mouthing off.”  Washington Times