Johannesburg - Police are looking for the father of a Brakpan Grade 2 child who shocked teachers and pupils by bringing a loaded gun to school to shoot a “bully” he claimed to have been tormenting him.
Brakpan police spokesperson Captain Pearl van Staad said the seven-year-old boy had taken his father’s loaded gun to school and showed it to the teacher.
“He told the teacher that he was going to shoot a schoolmate who bullies him,” she said.
When the police arrived at the boy’s home after confiscating the gun, the father - the owner of the weapon - had fled, said Van Staad.
“We now have a search warrant and need to find the father,” she said.
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Van Staad said he had not placed his gun in a safe bolted to the wall, as per safety regulations.
“His safe was not bolted to the wall and it was open,” she said.
Van Staad said if a gun owner was found to have contravened the Firearms Control Act, they could be charged with failure to lock their safe, failure to have the keys to the safe and failure to have their firearm in their possession when not in a locked safe.
The Gauteng Education Department confirmed the incident.
Spokesperson Steve Mabona said that when the pupil was taken to the police station, he had been released after counselling.
“The school governing body has already met with the parents to reinforce their understanding of the school’s code of conduct and the seriousness of their child’s conduct.
“The meeting resolved that the pupil be taken for further psychological intervention,” said Mabona.
This meeting took place before the police were called in to investigate the incident.
Mabona urged parents to encourage their children to follow school rules.
DA Gauteng community safety spokesperson Michele Clark said schools had been turned into “crime scenes” and accused Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi and his Community Safety counterpart, Sizakele Nkosi-Malobane, of not doing enough to secure them.
Earlier this week, a deputy principal in Duduza was shot and killed in his office when three men walked in claiming they were there to fix an electrical fault.
In 2012, Grade 11 pupil Tsundzukani Mthombeni from Phineas Xulu Secondary School in Vosloorus, on the East Rand, took his police officer mother’s gun to school and shot and killed a bully in class.
He had been bullied by Grade 10 pupil Nkululeko Ndlovu and two other boys.
Mthombeni was sentenced to seven years in prison, suspended for five years, on a count of culpable homicide. On the firearm charge, he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, also suspended for five years.
Clark said: “The Department of Community Safety’s patrollers placed at various schools are not trained to deal with the severity of bullying, fighting, drugs and various other crimes that take place daily on the school grounds.”
She said school infrastructure was poor and there was no proper fencing, making it easy for criminals to gain access to the schools.
“Some schools don’t have panic buttons, alarms and electric fences.
“Many schools in the province do not have security guards due to a lack of financial resources,” said Clarke.