HOUSTON — The kindergarten students were just sitting down in a cafeteria at Betsy Ross Elementary School on Monday when a loaded pistol tumbled out of the pocket of a 6-year-old boy and discharged, injuring him and two other children, school officials said.
The children’s injuries were not life threatening, the police said. They were taken by ambulance to a hospital, while school counselors tried to calm traumatized children and frantic parents rushed to the school in central Houston to pick up their children.
The police said it remained unclear how the boy obtained the weapon or who owns it. Only one shot was fired. School officials said the boy who had brought the gun suffered an injury to his leg that may have been caused by the bullet. The other two children, a boy and a girl, both 5, appeared to have been hit by flying debris or shrapnel. None were identified.
The shooting happened about 10:35 a.m. as the kindergartners were taking their seats in the cafeteria and some older children were filing in, said Sam Sarabia, the chief elementary schools officer for the Houston Independent School District. Mr. Sarabia said the gun fell from the boy’s pocket as he sat down to eat.
Two children, interviewed with their parents, said they heard the shot and saw a girl bleeding from her right foot.
“It dropped on the floor under the table, and it was loud, so loud,” said Kennedi Glapion, 6. “And she got shot in the foot.”
Isaiah Green, 7, said the gun “popped real loud” and “everybody was screaming — they was crying because the girl got shot.”
Teachers rushed children to their classrooms and locked them in for nearly an hour while the police secured the scene and medics tended to the injured children, school officials said.
District officials said that the school would have extra security guards and a team of counselors on hand Wednesday, but that no decision had been made about searching children entering the building.
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