Sam Hooper

Last week, several journalism students traveled to the CSPA Convention at Columbia University in New York City. I did not go on the trip due to my very empty bank account. While the students were away on the trip, students at the high school received a notice about an incident that occurred after Open Mic Night on March 12th. The notice revealed that a 16-year-old threatened a 17-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy with a toy handgun. At first you may think it was humorous because who would use a toy gun to actually frighten someone? But the two students that were threatened proceeded to call the police because they really believed they were endangered. The incident occurred at ten o’clock in the school parking lot so it must have been hard to identify the toy gun in the dark. I for one would not be able to tell if the gun was fake.
According to the Patriot Ledger, Police chief Mike Ohrenberger said, “He said he was going to blow her brains out…Then he made a statement that wouldn’t it be funny if he shot the other kid, too?”
Why would a student go out of his way to terrify two innocent students and proceed to call the 17-year-old girl and again say he was going to shoot her? Police said that the 16-year-old later told the girl that he was only kidding. You can only take a joke too far and most will agree that this joke was out of line. It is ridiculous that a student would go through that much trouble and later report that he was only kidding.