15-YEAR-OLD STUDENT KILLED BY COPS AT CUMMINGS WAS ARMED WITH A PELLET GUN

By Juan Montoya

Brownsville police spokesmen have confirmed that the "weapon" a Cummings eighth-grader pointed at officers in a school hallway before they killed him was a pellet gun that looked like a real handgun.
Interim Brownsville Police Chief Orlando Rodriguez told the Associated Press that  the 15-year-old "gunman" now identified as Jaime Gonzalez had "plenty of opportunities" to lower the weapon but "didn't want to."
Rodriguez says told the AP that the two officers fired three shots and struck Gonzalez at least twice.

Some students at the school said Gonzalez was apparently upset over a recent breakup with his girlfriend. Gonzalez shot and killed by Brownsville police during a confrontation in the hallway.

Others say that he was upset that his girlfriend had been suspended. Police officers responded to an emergency call about 8 a.m. of an eighth grade student in possession of a weapon.

 A teacher had also told El Rrun-Rrun that the weapon turned out to be a pellet gun, and not a real handgun as was previously reported by police.

"Supposedly the kid was upset cause administration had suspended his girlfriend and had air soft gun (bb/pellet gun) in his pocket..." according to sources with Cheezmeh, the social group which broke the story on Facebook as followers posted live updates throughout the day on its site.
Some accounts of the story indicate that two police officers fired at the student, including Everardo Longoria, the brother of city commissioner Ricardo Longoria.
(Longoria, incidentally, has been involved in several recent high-profile police stories, including the DWI arrest of former Mayor Pat Ahumada and the DWI arrest of Lupita Molina who was driving an uninsured car owned by Texas State Rep. Rene Oliveira. During that arrest, commissioner Melissa Zamora was reported to have arrived at the scene and disregarded officers' warnings not to talk with the suspected DWI driver, who was her friend.)
 According to police the student was seen with the weapon and when officers arrived, "engaged" police before he was shot. He was taken to Valley Baptist Medical Center in Brownsville where he died. His name has not been released. Media reports indicate that at least one additional student was detained for questioning. Justice of the Peace Kip V. Johnson Hodge ordered an autopsy.
"He was upset because he and his girlfriend had broken up," said a student, daughter of a local attorney.
The school was placed on lock-down and students are being relocated to Porter High School, where parents can pick them up.
The incident compelled the Brownsville Independent School District to lock down the campus and parents of Cummings students thronged to the campus only to be turned away by officers who had cordoned the area and prevented anyone from entering or leaving the school grounds.
School board members were called to the BISD main office early Wednesday to get a report on the situation and to prepare for the press conference later that afternoon.
No one knows how the student was able to introduce the weapon into the school grounds and there was no report on whether any students or teachers had been hurt by the student. Early reports indicate that a teacher may have been the target of the student.
"In the past few months we've had a five-year-old introduce a handgun into a private school and now a student brings a gun into a middle school," said a parent standing outside the Cummings parking lot before it was known the "weapon" was a pellet gun. "The role of the parents and the security at the school has to be carefully examined here. I just hope no innocent people were hurt and that the police had no other alternative but to shoot the kid."