An ex-con is expected to face charges stemming from a campus gun scare involving his 14-year-old son, who brought a loaded pistol belonging to his father to his South Bay high school, police said Thursday.
Zachariah Joseph Dow, 36, surrendered to Chula Vista police on Wednesday night, about seven hours after the non-injury gun scare at Hilltop High School, according to police.
An assistant principal at the Claire Avenue campus made an emergency call in the late morning to report that several students had seen a ninth- grader displaying a handgun in class, Lt. Fritz Reber said.
“They claimed the suspect student … made statements indicating that the gun was loaded and that he could potentially use (it) to shoot someone at school,” Reber said.
When officers went to the suspect’s classroom and summoned him, he stood up and reached for his backpack, though not in “an aggressive way,” the lieutenant said, and they rushed over and took him into custody without incident. Inside the boy’s bag was a loaded .44-caliber revolver, according to police.
The arrested teen was booked into juvenile hall on suspicion of bringing a loaded firearm onto school grounds.
Detectives discovered that the suspect’s father owned the gun that police seized at the school. An unsecured .22 caliber pistol also was found under a mattress in the man’s home, according to police.
Dow was booked on suspicion of being a felon in possession of a firearm, owning prohibited ammunition, child cruelty and criminal storage of a firearm. He posted bail and was released from custody about 7:15 this morning, a jail clerk said.
Friends of the arrested boy told news crews he had been bullied at school.
–City News Service
