CHICAGO — The mother of an 8-year-old boy who took her gun to school and accidentally fired it in a classroom last year has been sentenced to 24 months of probation. Tatanina Kelly, 29, received the sentence after pleading guilty to child endangerment before Judge Megan Goldish, according to court records.
Last May, officials said that Kelly’s son took a 9-millimeter Glock from under her bed and took it to class at Walt Disney Magnet School, 4130 North Marine Drive. The gun fired as the boy showed it to a classmate, and a bullet ricocheted off the floor, causing graze wounds to a 7-year-old boy’s stomach area and upper lip, according to a CPD report documenting the incident.
Prosecutors said Kelly is licensed to own firearms.
“Anytime we see a gun coming into our schools it’s very troubling, especially when it’s an elementary school,” Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez Martinez told the Sun-Times. “It was in a backpack, so it wasn’t that it was somebody trying to purposely use the gun in some way.”
During a bail hearing last May, Judge Michael Hogan remarked, “We are inches away, possibly centimeters away, from a very different case and a very different tragedy.”
Hogan called the incident a “supremely negligent act.”
CWBChicago filed Freedom of Information Act requests with several city departments for records related to the incident. The Office of Emergency Management and Communications refused to provide the 911 call that brought first responders to the scene. The agency relented after the Illinois Attorney General’s office ruled that their refusal to release the materials was in violation of state law. CWBChicago subscribers can review the documents and records provided by the city at this link.