Panicked parents and a teacher called Morgan Hill Police Monday
afternoon just before 5 p.m. saying that four men with assault
weapons, handguns and wearing black masks were approaching
youngsters about to start baseball practice in Jackson Park
adjacent to an elementary school.
Panicked parents and a teacher called Morgan Hill Police Monday afternoon just before 5 p.m. saying that four men with assault weapons, handguns and wearing black masks were approaching youngsters about to start baseball practice in Jackson Park adjacent to an elementary school.
The men turned out to be teenaged boys playing commando, said Lt. Joe Sampson; they told police they were having a good time.
“Initially they thought it was a bit of a joke,” he said, “but panicked when officers arrived and tried to get away.”
Police, however, initially thought the teens were trying to get into position to shoot at the field full of baseball-playing children.
Within 15 minutes, the four teenaged males, 13- to 16-years old, were in custody and police had possession of an arsenal of replica weapons. No one was hurt but it was a close thing.
“They were just a trigger pull away from being shot,” said Sampson, who was at the scene.
“If they had made a false move or threatened anyone, then the officer is in a situation we never want to find ourselves in,” he said, suggesting that the teenagers could well have been injured or killed. “We were all in a stunned state that this is what these young people chose to do, knowing the consequences.”
The teacher, from the after school YMCA program on the school campus, told police the young men were pointing the weapons toward the rear of houses on Trail Avenue. Trail runs along the eastern edge of the school located on Fountain Oaks Drive between Hill Road and East Dunne Avenue and near Jackson Oaks.
Four patrol officers plus Bruce Cumming, interim chief of police and Sampson, sped to the park and ordered the four with guns and masks to the ground. Two boys took cover in nearby brush west of the park; two others fled toward the school playground, Sampson said.
Officer Rick Vestal noticed one gun had a white, plastic handle, not usually found on real firearms.
“He notified the others and probably saved some lives,” Sampson said. “It took great discipline for the officers to hold their fire until the last possible moment but there were children in the background.”
If there had been a firefight, Sampson said, people would have been injured or killed. Sampson wants the public to know that, even though the boys thought it was a game, police had no way of knowing that and their first job is to protect the public.
Sampson said the guns appeared to be a black assault rifle, a black semi automatic handgun, a chrome and black semi automatic handgun and a white pistol.
“This can be career-ending for an officer,” Sampson said about an officer-involved shooting. “Emotionally, you never make it back.”
Sheila Martinez pulled up in front of the school to pick up her 6-year old son at the YMCA center just before 5 p.m.
“I saw these two guys with AK-47-type guns and regular looking handguns about 3-feet away from me,” Martinez said. “I was mad that they would do such a thing; then I saw that they had no expression on their faces and I thought they would shoot me,” she said. “I knew they were kids but I remembered Columbine. It was very scary, the way they looked at me.”
Martinez ran inside the YMCA building and, with a teacher, got the children on the floor as far away as possible from the door but she kept watching through the window.
“The two met up with two other boys at a grassy knoll near the park. The police were pointing their guns at the boys,” she said.
All four boys were taken into custody without incident, cited for possession of replica firearms and for felony possession of replica firearms on school grounds. They were released to their parents at the station; the guns were confiscated as evidence.
Sampson said the parents had knowingly bought the guns for their sons and several wanted the guns returned.
He said he tried to make it clear to the parents that officers were not over-reacting, given the number of schoolyard shootings in the past few years. Officers emphasized to the boys and their parents what could easily have happened, that the boys could have been killed.
“They finally came around to see our perspective,” Sampson said. “Officers go out with the mindset that anything can happen and you never know what it can be.”
“It’s not a game for us,” Sampson said. “Everyone who puts on a uniform wants to go home at the end of the day, and thankful that they didn’t have to shoot someone.”
One boy had previously come to police notice for possession of a replica firearm in Morgan Hill during the past year, police said. Sampson said he did not know if all four live in Morgan Hill residents but, because there were no vehicles or bicycles near the scene, he thought they had walked to the park.
Martinez said she worries that the boys will keep on doing this unless their parents get involved.
The Columbine High School incident, in which two Littleton, Colo., teenagers with assault weapons gunned down 12 classmates and a teacher, passed its fifth anniversary a week ago today with plenty of media attention. Parents, teachers and school administrators across the country have spent years trying to avoid a recurrence with counseling and education.
Sampson said today that, if there is one lesson to take away from Monday’s incident it is to treat these replica guns with respect if you have to have them around at all. Don’t point guns – real or not – at the general public and never point them at police.
“Parents, educate your children about these things,” Sampson said.
At Jackson this morning it was business as usual except that students were taking state tests.
