RISING STAR, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) — About a month after a third-grade student in Texas found a firearm belonging to a superintendent in a school restroom, parents have expressed concern that they won’t having been warned earlier by school officials.
In January, the Rising Star Elementary student found the gun and immediately notified a teacher without touching the gun, Superintendent Robby Stuteville told Nexstar’s KTAB. The gun belonged to Stuteville, who said he and the school principal were out in the open on campus.
Stuteville explained that he removed the gun and placed it in a stall while using the restroom. The gun was left in the bathroom unattended for about 15 minutes before it was found.
“There was never any danger other than the obvious,” Stuteville said last week. He then said he was ‘proud’ of the student and praised his behavior after finding the gun. Speaking to KTAB on Thursday, Stuteville said he no longer brings his gun to school.
Local law enforcement told KTAB they only recently learned of the incident, despite the incident occurring last month. Rising Star Police Chief Don Braly confirmed an active investigation began on Wednesday.
“When this investigation is complete, information and facts, not rumors, will be passed to the district attorney’s office,” Braly said.
Some parents say they were also left in the dark about the incident.
Nearly 30 parents showed up for an emergency meeting on Thursday evening. Their general consensus was that they didn’t feel like Stuteville was acting ‘maliciously’, as one parent put it, but they weren’t happy to be kept in the dark for so long. .
“Why as parents we had to find out through the news…It just makes it look like the school has something to hide,” one parent said.
Here is an excerpt from the Rising Star ISD Contingency Operations Plan:
According to the Rising Star ISD Emergency Operations Plan, firearms are considered an emergency response situation. Response protocol requiring prompt notification of parents and law enforcement to be performed by superintendent or business manager.
Other parents say they felt the issue was overstated, even reaching out to their parent group to berate them.
“How many of your children have access to guns in your own home? A group of you, including mine. I think it’s a mistake and I think you’re pointing the finger at him for doing something like that, it’s wrong,” a relative told the crowd.
KTAB spoke Friday with Giovanni Mata, a gun owner and father of a third-grade student involved in the incident. According to Mata, a teacher sent his son to check on the gun after another student pointed it out.
“So the teacher asked another kid, my son… ‘Can you go see if it’s a real gun?’ Why would you send a child? Why not send someone else? Mata, who recently moved to the area from Uvalde, said.
“Be put in my place. Three minutes for this guy to kill all these people in just 3 minutes,” Mata explained, thinking back to last year’s fatal shooting at Robb Primary School in Uvalde. “And [this] pistol was left unattended for 15 minutes. At one point I just wanted to say hey, that wasn’t your kid here. If this was your child in this situation, I’m sure you would act completely differently. You can’t say it was a mistake to leave a gun there. You cannot confuse a life.
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