Jasmin Devlin was arrested after her six-year-old son brought her gun to his elementary school (Picture: Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office)
A mother in Pennsylvania was arrested after her six-year-old son brought a gun she owned illegally to his elementary school.
Police responded to Joseph K Gotwals Elementary School in Norristown on February 9 when a school employee found a child carrying a 9mm handgun in his backpack.
His mother, Jasmin Devlin, was arrested and charged with endangering the welfare of a child and reckless endangerment for failing to properly secure a firearm.
On February 8, Devlin’s children found her loaded gun hidden in her dresser drawer. The kids discovered the weapon while searching for a laptop charger.
Her 10-year-old son took the bullets out of the gun and began to play with it, pointing it at his six-year-old brother pretending to shoot him.
The two boys returned the weapon to the drawer, but the six-year-old told detectives that he went back for the weapon in the middle of the night. The child put the handgun in his backpack and went to school the next morning.
On the schoolbus, the six-year-old took out the gun and began showing other children. The frightened students immediately told the school secretary as they got off the bus.
The secretary searched the child’s backpack and saw the gun. She called the police. Detectives arrived to the school, where they found a 9mm handgun with eight loose bullets in his Marvel superhero backpack.
Police Chief Michael Bishop called the children ‘heroes’ for speaking up when they saw the weapon.
‘I would like to commend the children who notified school officials immediately, thus preventing another tragedy at a school,’ Bishop said. ‘These children are the true heroes of this unfortunate incident.’
After confiscating the weapon, investigators then realized it was a ‘straw purchased’ firearm – a gun bought by one person then exchanged with another for goods or services other than money.
In this case, the firearm was purchased by Joseph Rudnistkas, who exchanged it with a drug dealer for marijuana, ecstasy, and cocaine. Rudnistkas was arrested in April 2022 for illegally purchasing and selling four guns this way – including the one that ended up in the six-year-old’s backpack.
‘This incident is a frightening reminder of the fact that children can and do find unsecured firearms in a home, and they play with them,’ Bishop said.
The incident occurred just over a month after another six-year-old child in Newport News, Virginia shot his teacher in class with a gun owned by his parents.
The gun at the terrifying shooting at Richneck Elementary School was legally purchased and ‘secured,’ according to the child’s parents.
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Devlin’s children found her loaded gun hidden in her dresser drawer. The kids discovered the weapon while searching for a laptop charger.
