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In Newtown wake: A boy is suspended over gun gesture

A week after the Newtown shooting, a six-year-old student in Maryland pointed his finger like a gun, said "pow" and his school suspended him. His parents filed an appeal this week to have the incident removed from his record. 

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AP
Regulating children's play is now an issue as the Newton shooting heightens gun sensitivities. A Maryland child was suspended for pointing his finger like a gun this week. Here, children at a Massachusetts elementary school play during recess.
  • By Associated Press

| Rockville, Md.

The family of a 6-year-old Silver Spring boy who – a week after the Newtown, Conn. shooting – was suspended from school  for pointing his finger like a gun and saying "pow" wants the incident stricken from the child's record.

The family's attorney filed an appeal Wednesday to ask that the incident be expunged. The attorney, Robin Ficker, said the boy had no intention to shoot anyone.

"His record says suspended for 'threatening to shoot a student' and that's a lie," Ficker told ABC News Jan. 3. "He wasn't threatening a student, he's never been around a gun, he doesn't know what a gun is, he doesn't know what killing anyone is, he had no intent to harm anyone."

A spokesman for the school system said he could not discuss individual students for privacy reasons, but said in a written statement that the boy's suspension from Roscoe Nix Elementary School in Silver Spring "was not a kneejerk reaction to a single incident."

The school wrote a letter to the boy's parents stating that he had been taken to the principal's office three times that day for similar behavior and was suspended after the third incident, according to ABC News.

The first grader was suspended for one day in December. The incident happened a week after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.

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