Girl who pointed finger gun was set to go to court. Here’s how JoCo handled the case
The 13-year-old Overland Park girl who was handcuffed and arrested for pointing a finger gun in class was set to go before a judge on Tuesday, but the Johnson County Juvenile Court hearing was canceled.
The girl, originally charged with felony threatening at Westridge Middle School, is now on a juvenile diversion program instead, said a spokeswoman for the Johnson County District Attorney.
In October, prosecutors and the girl’s lawyer discussed the possibility of a diversion program that would allow her to avoid a felony charge.
While details of her diversion agreement were not public because of her age, most such contracts with the court “are very basic, and list only 8-10 conditions,“ the district attorney’s website says.
The contracts require that the juvenile not violate the law, attend school, obey parents, make amends with the victim, attend an education group and perform community service hours.
The girl’s mother and grandfather told The Star about the Sept. 18 incident: A boy in her eighth-grade class at the Shawnee Mission district school had asked her, if you could kill five people in this class who would they be? The girl formed a gun with her fingers and pointed at four other students one at a time, and then turned the pretend weapon toward herself.
School officials said they received several calls about the incident on a school tip line. The next day she was walked out of school, handcuffed and arrested by a school resource office employed by Overland Park Police. The resource officer is still with the department but no longer works at Westridge.
The girl’s mother, Vanessa McCaron, later told The Star that her daughter had been the victim of bullying for months by some of the classmates who provoked the incident.
She was picked on “to the point where one day she was found in the corner of the school lunchroom sobbing,” the mother said.
The girl has lived with her grandfather, Jon Cavanaugh, in California since she was arrested. Her parents had been in the process of moving the family to Norway and had already sold their home. She stayed behind in the U.S. to appear in court.
Details about where she is living now were not available Monday. Cavanaugh could not be reached for comment.
