SCHOOL/YOUTH VIOLENCE
Mt. Morris Township, Michigan Incident (2/29/00)
Page Updated: 02/17/02 07:13 AM
GUNS
AND CHILDREN: A Deadly Environment
Six-Year-Old Killer's World Had No Place For Toys
Washington Post, 3/21/00
MOUNT MORRIS TOWNSHIP, Mich.—They say barely anything good comes from around here--nothing pretty, anyway. The flowers that grow here are plastic.
Neighbors watched as the little boy sat on that concrete porch painted blood red. They watched as the boy, 6 years old, sat there while a steady stream of people, "crackheads," walked in and out of that house--leaving the door wide open even in the dead of winter.
The boy never played, one neighbor said. He just sat there with his 8-year-old brother, "like men," while the men of the house drank their 40s, sold drugs, shot guns and cussed at the neighbors across the street.
People shake their heads now and wonder about the little boy--still small for 6. "Looks more like he is 4." What made that little boy go into the second bedroom of the "crack house" he lived in on Juliah Avenue, open the cardboard shoe box on the bed, and grab the loaded .32-caliber semiautomatic that was already set to fire? What made him put it in his pants pocket and walk the five blocks to school that cold Tuesday morning, Feb. 29?
Three
Indicted in Michigan School Shooting
Los Angeles Times, 3/17/00
A grand jury indicted three men on charges stemming from the February shooting death of a 6-year-old girl at a Mount Morris Township, Mich., school by her first-grade classmate, federal prosecutors said. Grand jurors charged Robert Lee Morris, 19, Jamelle Andre James, 19, and Sir Marcus Winfrey, 22, all of Mount Morris Township, with possessing stolen firearms and being unlawful users of marijuana while in possession of firearms, the U.S. attorney for eastern Michigan said in a statement. Winfrey is the uncle of the 6-year-old boy who police say shot and killed Kayla Rolland at Buell Elementary School on Feb. 29.
Boy
Initially Tried to Shift Blame, Officer Says
Flint Journal, 3/15/00
The 6-year-old boy who shot Kayla R. Rolland in their first-grade class tried to implicate a classmate when a police officer and a school official asked about the whereabouts of the handgun.The young boy said "something to the effect that (the other boy) told me to load it, point it or shoot it," Mt. Morris Township Officer Walter Greenhill testified Tuesday in Central District Court.
The boy's classmate then led authorities to the boy's desk in the front of the classroom, where the gun had been stashed, Greenhill said.
Mom
-- Boy Didn't Mean to Kill
Flint Journal, 3/11/00
There are three things Tamarla Owens' youngest son has told her regularly since police say he fatally shot classmate Kayla R. Rolland, and one question that she can't answer:"All he says is ... 'I want to go back to school ... I miss you, Mom. I love you,' and 'Are we ever going to be a family again?' "
Owens, who spoke publicly for the first time to The Flint Journal and Channel 5 (WNEM) Friday, said she has talked to her 6-year-old son daily since the shooting.
"He knew he had done something wrong, he didn't know what," she said of the boy's response to her immediately after the tragedy. "All he kept telling me was he didn't mean to do it."
Parents
in Classroom Shooting Case Have Lawyers Advising Options
Flint Journal, 3/11/00
MOUNT MORRIS TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) -- Rivaling attorneys, personal advisers, and possible book and movie deals have taken center stage since a 6-year-old girl was shot to death in her first-grade classroom.On Friday, an attorney for Dedric Owens, the jailed father of the boy accused in the Feb. 29 death of Kayla Rolland, said he has contacted more than 20 firms, gauging possible interest in a movie or book deal.
The boy's mother, Tamarla Owens, said she's preparing a court fight to regain custody of that son and her two other children, now in the temporary custody of a maternal aunt.
And Kayla's parents will be going to court to see who will be personal representative, giving them right to sue.
"People are going to start looking at this and saying, `Now it's money time,' Have we put Kayla out of our thoughts?" State Rep. Vera B. Rison, a Mount Morris Township Democrat, told The Flint Journal for a story Saturday.
The
Family Portrait -- Crack, Crime, and Jail
Detroit Free Press, 3/4/00
MT. MORRIS TOWNSHIP -- When he squeezed the trigger Tuesday morning on a cheap pocket pistol, the first-grader who killed 6-year-old Kayla Rolland extended his family's entanglement in the criminal justice system for a third generation.
The boy's father, an aunt and his paternal grandmother have scuffled with the law as low-level crack dealers and dope house operators, according to court records in Flint.
A
Life of Guns, Drugs, and Killing -- All at Age 6
New York Times, 3/3/00
MOUNT MORRIS TOWNSHIP, Mich., March 1 -- His father was in and out of prison. His mother, evicted from her own home, sent him and his brother to live with an uncle in a dilapidated house here, just north of Flint. There, he did not even have his own bed and fell asleep in a place that neighbors say was filled with noise, drugs and guns.
And on Tuesday, the police say, the 6-year-old got his hands on one of those guns, stuffed it in his pants pocket and went off to first grade, where he killed a classmate.
At
Young Victim's School -- Reassurance and Questions
New York Times, 3/3/00
MOUNT MORRIS TOWNSHIP, Mich., March 2 -- Two days after a 6-year-old boy took a gun to first grade and killed a classmate, school officials in this working-class district just north of Flint tried to reassure parents that it was safe to send their children to school.
Roommate is
Charged with Role in Slaying
Detroit Free Press, 3/3/00
Sitting around Sir-Marcus Winfrey's bungalow littered with drugs and guns, Jamelle James entertained Winfrey's 6-year-old nephew by twirling a loaded handgun in his face, prosecutors say.
A week later, a school girl is dead, a community is trying to come to terms with a shooting and James is in jail facing a homicide charge that could send him to prison for 15 years if he is convicted.
Mother Had Been
Investigated for Abuse
Detroit Free Press, 3/3/00
Tamarla Owens, the mother of the Flint-area first-grader who shot and killed a classmate Tuesday, allegedly abused the boy's older brother last year but state investigators decided then not to take the children from their mother.
The state Family Independence Agency disclosed the abuse finding in a petition filed this week in Genesee County Family Court. Under the FIA's guidelines, the lack of follow-up action indicates that child abuse investigators must have concluded there was no immediate threat to the safety of Owens' children.
Why child abuse investigators chose not to remove the children was among many questions left unanswered Thursday.
"There's a lot
of news which hasn't yet come out..."
Detroit Free Press, 3/3/00
It was a shooting with witnesses aplenty and a suspect nabbed at the scene. Yet as detectives delve into Kayla's slaying, their investigation has been hindered by the changing and conflicting accounts of young and traumatized witnesses, and that most enduring of schoolhouse traditions: rumor.
Occupying detectives Thursday were persistent reports that a teacher or custodian at Buell Elementary had been told the 6-year-old shooting suspect was armed Tuesday, yet they took no action. It is an issue being followed closely by Kayla's family and Geoffrey Fieger, a Southfield lawyer who said he has been retained by Kayla's biological father, Ricky Rolland. "This gun was widely brandished to other students" before the slaying, Fieger said Thursday. "There is a lot of news that hasn't yet come out ..."
Boy,
6, Accused in School Killing
New York Times, 3/1/00
MOUNT MORRIS TOWNSHIP, Mich., Feb. 29 -- A 6-year-old boy pulled a gun from his pants and shot a 6-year-old girl to death today in front of their first-grade teacher and classmates in this Flint suburb, the authorities said.
The boy fired a bullet from a .32-caliber gun inside Buell Elementary near Flint, 60 miles from Detroit, striking 6-year-old Kayla Rolland in the neck. She died a half-hour later.
A
Child Kills a Child; A Nation Asks Why
Detroit Free Press, 2/29/00
MT. MORRIS TOWNSHIP -- It began as a playground scuffle.
It ended a day later, with a 6-year-old boy standing before classmate Kayla Rolland with a stolen handgun.
He fired. The shot bewildered a nation that thought it had witnessed the depths of schoolyard violence. And 6-year-old Kayla was dead.
A Child Kills a
Child
Detroit Free Press, 3/1/00
MT. MORRIS TOWNSHIP -- It began as a playground scuffle.
It ended with a 6-year-old boy standing before classmate Kayla Rolland with a stolen handgun.
"You move and I'll shoot," a classmate recalled the boy saying.
He then fired. It was a shot that bewildered a nation that thought it had witnessed the depths of schoolyard violence. And 6-year-old Kayla was dead.
First
Grader Kills Classmate at School
Flint (Michigan) Journal, 3/1/00
In a school shooting made especially disturbing by the age of the youngsters, a 6-year-old boy pulled a gun from his pants and shot a little girl to death in their first-grade classroom Tuesday in front of their horrified teacher and classmates.
The boy fired a bullet from a .32-caliber gun inside Buell Elementary near Flint, 60 miles from Detroit, striking 6-year-old Kayla Rolland in the neck. She died a half-hour later.
Boy
Has Violent History
Flint Journal, 3/1/00
A 6-year-old boy who allegedly shot and killed a first-grade classmate was living in a crack house and had been suspended from school for fighting and other behavioral problems, the child's father told an investigator.Genesee County Sheriff Robert J. Pickell said he spoke with the boy's father, an inmate at the county jail, late Tuesday night on behalf of Mt. Morris Township police.
When he heard about the shooting at Buell Elementary School, the man said he had a feeling his child was involved.
Authorities Say Boy Found Gun on Bed in 'Flophouse' Where He was Staying
Flint Journal, 3/1/00
MOUNT MORRIS TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) -- The 6-year-old boy who killed a fellow first-grader used a stolen handgun he apparently discovered loaded and lying in a bedroom at a "flophouse" where he was staying, investigators said Wednesday.
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