2 students face expulsion after pellet gun incident

WILMINGTON, Del. (WPVI) -- Officials in Wilmington, Delaware are trying to figure out how a pellet gun ended up inside a school bathroom.

That gun ended up going off, injuring two boys.

It happened around 9:45 Thursday morning at the Warner Elementary School on West 18th Street.

Two fifth grade boys entered a school bathroom when, officials say, one boy handed the air pistol to his friend. There was some horseplay when the air gun discharged, injuring two other boys.

Warner Elementary School Principal Chrishaun Fitzgerald explains, "The students begin to play around... a little horseplay with the air gun. One pellet discharged. It hit the wall and ricocheted and grazed someone's neck, and then another student was struck in the thumb."

Both victims were treated by the school nurse and there was apparently no need to take them to a hospital.

The parents of the two fifth graders who handled the weapon denied any knowledge of how the gun got there.

Both boys, it appears, will be expelled from Warner Elementary School.

Principal Fitzgerald tells us, "Student code of conduct that governs our body here as a school and also as a district calls for very specific consequences ... expulsion from school."

The weapon was recovered by the police from inside a student locker.

All the parents in the 450-student school have been notified.

Just last year at the same school there was a similar incident involving a pellet gun.