Cops: Student, 14, flashes gun

TOLEDO, Ohio

- A 14-year-old student displayed a pellet gun inside an Ohio high school, setting off a lockdown and short standoff yesterday in a hallway before he was taken into custody and charged, police and a witness said.

The student was kicked out of class and sent to a room for students serving in-school suspensions, where he told a school police officer that he had a gun and pulled it partly out of his book bag, said Kayla Williams, a student inside the room.

"We ran out screaming," said Williams, who was standing just feet away from the boy, who suffered minor injuries after officers fired a bean bag round at his feet to end the standoff. No one else was hurt, police said.

The boy was being held at a juvenile jail and was charged as a juvenile with making terroristic threats and illegal conveyance of a dangerous ordnance. The Associated Press is not naming the suspect because of his age.

The pellet gun looked like a real handgun, Toledo police spokesman Lt. Mark King said. The teen was taken into custody after he was isolated in a hallway.

Negotiators talked to the boy during the standoff, but officials said he didn't give a reason for bringing the pellet gun to Scott High School, which sits just outside downtown Toledo.

The boy was holding the gun but never pointed it at police during the standoff, King said.

A woman outside the school, Loraine Foster of Toledo, said the teen is her nephew. She was there with the boy's mother, who was talking to police.

"That's just not him," said Foster, who didn't give the boy's name. "I don't know what happened."

Scott High School has about 600 students.