An elementary school principal in rural West Texas suspended a fourth-grade boy because he allegedly made a terroristic threat.
More specifically, the boy brought a ring to Kermit Elementary School in Kermit, Texas and informed another boy that it was a magic ring, the Odessa American reports.
With the magic ring, the boy said, he could totally make the second boy disappear.
The boy with the magic ring had seen “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” with his family last weekend, noted the boy’s father, Jason Steward.
Roxanne Greer, the principal at Kermit Elementary, assured Steward that the boy’s threat to whip out magic and wipe another child off the very face of the earth was very serious and would not be tolerated. It was — somehow — a threat to another child’s physical safety, Greer declared.
Greer would not elaborate on her reasoning.
“All student stuff is confidential,” the sophisticated, well-spoken principal told the Odessa American.
Kermit school district superintendent Bill Boyd did not comment.
Steward, the boy’s father, said he is waiting for written documentation about his son’s suspension. School officials in the town of 5,708 promised to put it in the mail.
The unidentified nine-year-old boy has been previously suspended for referring to the color of a student’s skin and possessing a book about pregnancies, Steward noted.
“The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” is the third installment of a three-movie series bringing J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” to the silver screen. The plot is hopelessly complex. Suffice it to say, a magic ring plays an important role.
The last two years have been a national embarrassment in terms of little boys (and a few little girls) getting in very serious trouble for having things that represent weapons — maybe, in fervid kid imaginations — but aren’t actually anything like real weapons.
In Maryland, for example, a student was suspended for two days because his teacher thought he shaped a strawberry, pre-baked toaster pastry into something resembling a gun. (RELATED: Second-grader suspended for having breakfast pastry shaped like a gun)
In Colorado, a seven-year-old boy got suspended because he lobbed a pretend grenade – probably heroically far – toward make-believe bad guys on the playground during recess. (RELATED: Seven-Year-Old Boy Lobs Pretend Grenade During Recess, Gets Suspended)
Also in Colorado, a second-grade teacher in Colorado filed a behavioral report on a boy after he drew a picture of a gun because she instructed him to go outside, look up at the clouds and draw what he saw.(RELATED: Teacher Asks Second Graders To Draw What They See In Clouds, Boy Sees Gun, Teacher WRITES UP BOY)
And officials at an elementary school in small-town Michigan impounded a third-grader boy’s batch of 30 homemade birthday cupcakes because they were adorned with green plastic figurines representing World War II soldiers. The school principal branded the military-themed cupcakes “insensitive” in light of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. (RELATED: School confiscates third-grader’s cupcakes topped with toy soldiers)
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