Regarding the student with guns on the West Rowan High campus:

This was nothing more than a horrible mistake that has been made to sound much worse than it was. You have probably scared all the parents of West Rowan to death by writing about something before you had all the facts! This story should have read “child forgets to take his skeet shooting guns out of his car before he came to school that morning and no amunition was in the guns or in the vehicle.” When the student went to his car to put his jacket in, he was upset to see what a terrible mistake he made and headed to the office to tell the resource officer. This is what the resource officers tell our children to do; if you happen to grab your brother’s coat, wear it to school and then stick your hands in the pockets and find his knife, you take it straight to the officer and nothing will be done.

This entire incident came about because this student wanted to do the right thing. He could have gotten in his car and drove home to put them away and just risked being expelled for leaving campus.

Austin Tyler Moore is a wonderful Christian person and has never been in trouble in school. He worked hard to make good grades and has plans for college. How could it possibly be fair to take that all away from him and exile him from his friends and school for a mistake? I understand that these rules are put in place to protect our children (and I have a 14-year-old freshman), but sometimes rules need to be broken. Please, he never threatened anyone, and how much harm could he have done with no ammunition?

God bless you, Austin, and good luck.

— Robin Troutman

Salisbury