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Teen shot in school standoff

The 15-year-old is on life support after ignoring pleas to drop what was thought to be a firearm. It was a pellet gun.

LONGWOOD - An eighth-grader was shot by a SWAT team officer in a school restroom Friday after he raised a pellet gun resembling a firearm toward the deputy, authorities said.

Christopher David Penley, 15, was hospitalized and on life support after he was shot about 10 a.m. in suburban Orlando's Milwee Middle School, Seminole County Sheriff Don Eslinger said. The teen's injuries were not revealed.

Eslinger said the student brought the pellet gun to school in his backpack, and a classroom scuffle broke out after another student saw it and told teachers. He said Penley then used the gun to direct the other student into a closet, dimmed the lights and left.

From there, the sheriff said, he roamed "throughout the campus."

"He was suicidal," Eslinger said. "During this standoff, and during the chase, the student said he was going to kill himself or die."

More than 40 officers, including the SWAT team and negotiators, converged on scene and followed Penley into a restroom.

Eslinger said negotiators tried unsuccessfully to start a dialogue with the boy.

"He did not respond. They pleaded with him to drop what was a - it looked like a 9mm Beretta handgun," Eslinger said. "He refused to even comment. All he said was his first name." At one time he held the gun to his neck, the sheriff said.

He said the boy raised the gun at the deputy, prompting him to shoot the boy.

Officers didn't realize until afterward that the boy's weapon was a pellet gun, the sheriff said. At a news conference, it was displayed beside a real Beretta.

"I would not be able to tell the difference." said Joyce Dawley, special agent in charge of a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation.

Investigators were trying to determine what led Penley to bring the weapon to school.

However, those who knew Penley say he was being bullied at school and was unhappy. He had run away from home several times, said Kelly Swofford, a neighbor whose 11-year-old son Jeffery is close friends with Penley.

"He came over last night and he said people were picking on him at school. I told him he needed to talk to his guidance counselor." Her son Jeffery said Penley talked about wanting to die when the two had breakfast Friday. He said Penley had fought with another boy, apparently over a girl.

"Everybody knew they were going to fight" Friday, Jeffery said. "I heard a rumor he had a BB gun, but I didn't think he really had one."

Phone calls to the home were not answered, and a person who answered the door declined comment. Kelly Swofford said the family was "devastated." Classes were canceled for the rest of the day, buses were called in and frantic parents came to pick up their children from the 1,100-student public school.

[Last modified January 14, 2006, 01:38:14]