You're not going to believe this
 

Last night we had a county sheriff (we live in the boonies) show up at our house letting us know that there was a problem with our daughter. Evidently, one of her friends on the school bus(8yr old) told my daughter(10yr old) that she wasn't going to be her friend anymore. My daughter started crying and told the other girl "I wish you were dead" the other girl laughed at her and my daughter said "I'll get a knife". The other girl told her parents when she got home and the parents called the police. So my quiet, wouldn't hurt a fly, overly sensitive daughter has now been charged with malicious assault. Zero tolerance in action.

She was actually charged with the crime of malicious assault? As no assault took place, I find it hard that anything other than disorderly conduct would even apply.

I guess I can't really blame the parents for getting the cops involved. Just two days ago, a 9 y/o at a local school took out a pocket knife and stabbed another student (and his friend) in the leg, causing a very bloody wound. There was not threat to get a knife, it was just done. All of this because the 9 y/o grabbed a piece of paper away from his friend and the friend took it back. They have no way of knowing what your daughter has or intends to do. If anyone told me at any age that they were going to get a knofe and said it in a threatening manner, I would call the cops also.

Incidentally, the 9 y/o was brought to a juvenile detention facility until the juvenile courts had time to review the case and decide what to do.

An assault did take place. An assault is a threat to do harm. If the daughter had actually stabbed the kid, it would have been battery.

And I agree with greedy. Your kid made a very nasty threat. Hopefully the charges will teach her that doing things like this is unacceptable.

There is a difference in laws between where you are and where I am. Verbalizing a threat here is not an assault. Here, making a threat is disorderly conduct. If the stabbing takes place, then it is battery, attempted homicide, etc. depending on how far it went.

My problem with this mainly is due to the fact that these people are our neighbors. These two girls have played together many times in our yard. I've met the parents and we've never had any type of conflict at all. Why couldn't they just call us and say "we've got a problem" or something. Honestly, I'd like to go down to those people and ask them if they really thought my daughter was going to hurt theirs. Kids say things like this all the time. How many years in jail would you be sentenced to if you were charged every time you said something like this when you were a kid. I know I'd probably be looking at life.

Well I'm admittedly not up on the laws of "The Darkside" ;) but in every state I've ever lived in, an assault has been a threat, and battery has been an actual attack.


Makes you wonder why it's not called a "battery rifle."

Did your daughter admit to anyone that she said it?

Did anyone else hear her say it?

Because if not, it becomes a he said she said thing.

I don't normally go for this type of defense, but frankly, I agree with you that this is ridiculous.

She admitted it. We stress telling the truth very much to our kids. After the cop left, my wife took our daughter over to the girls house to apologize. When they walked in, the little girl was playing cards with her brother and said "Hi Taylor! Wanna play cards?" She was obviously fearing for her life.

"play cards"? Inviting a minor to GAMBLE?!

Call the police!!

LOL!!! :lol: That just made my afternoon!

It's very sad on both sides of the coin, what our society has become. It's a shame that kids can't make the same mistakes we did as kids. If another kid said that to me when I was 8 yrs old, I would have laughed at them. Now everyone has to wonder if that other kid really will do what they said. Kids say dumb things. It's part of growing up. I said tons of really stupid things and would have been in real trouble by today's standards.

going to a quasi inner city elementary school I heard that at least twice a day. Ten years ago it was all cool. You threaten to pop the proverbial cap and then are playing street hockey at lunch. people need to get a life.

Usually there has to be a reasonable belief that the person was going to carry out the threat - 90% of the population has made some idle threat in the heat of the moment, most of them would never do anything about it. We'd all be in jail if simply saying "I'm gonna kill you!" was that bad.

I had the phone in my hand, ready to dial...

But seriously, threats like that from an eight year old seem meaningless. Sure, the world isn't what it was when I was eight (I sound old *shudder*) but I think it's very unlikly that your daughter would have hurt the girl. Even if she could have done something like that, the parents of the other child should have talked to you, not called police... honestly, how many eight year old girls are thought of as threatening?

hmm, where i'm at, that would be called terroristic threat, not assault or battery

Whe I was in middle school, a kid stabbed me in the hand with an Xacto knife for touching a drill that he wasn't done using, even though he hadn't touched it for about ten minutes. Nobody called the police, and there was no further confrontation. I'm not a big fan of making other people (police) deal with my problems, so I just cauterized it with a wood burning tool (back when I was 14 years old, this seemed like a good idea,) put some bandages on it, and kept working.


edit: it would be more accurate to say that he stabbed me "through the hand" rather than "in the hand"

Can you still see where he stabbed you "through the hand"?

Zero tolerance, unfortunately, teaches us to not deal with individuals. If this was a pattern with your daughter, that would be one thing; but this is an isolated incident. I'm with you -- the parents should have called you. Maybe instead of going to them in defense, you can approach them to ask, "hey, in the future when our kids have conflict, which is bond to happen, can we come up with a friendly way to deal with it?"

When I threw rocks at my neighbor (and best friend) because she was following me and my "boyfriend" (I think I was 7 years old) around, her stitches right above the eye was enough to teach me. That, and the fact that the parents worked together! I believe I got a weeks ristriction for that one. It takes a village to raise a child -- not a cop!

Its assult, and I AGREE that it is assult. However it was handled very poorly.

As parents, and especially parents of friends I would always think to go to the parents first unless she had physically harmed, bruised, stabbed, cut, or caused pain. Then and only then would I even imagine getting the law involved. Its such a headache and hassle not only for the 2 families but for the individual officer as well. It happened on the school bus which here means school property and thats probably why its zero tolerance.

A similar event happened to my younger brother. Hes 17, a senior in high school and an ok kid. He behaves and hasnt caused too much upset among his teachers(he hasnt been to see the principle or even detention for that matter) because he likes ROTC and he knows to stay out of trouble. Well he was goofin around one day with some of the kids from band and as part of "initiation" to the freshman they had a game of full contact football. Somehow a freshman got hurt and my brother and 2 of his friends were charged with assult and battery. The assult was "you're goin down you dumb freshman" and apparently they tackled this freshman(individually during the game) and he was hurt with a sprained ankle. To me this is minor and if there was such pain.. parents should have been called, or school officals can handle it since we have our own School Resource Officer(aka county sheriff) or the parents could have called the band directors since the school is pretty leniant by letting the band directors deal with band issues. Insted these parents went to the ER filed a report and my brother and his friends were arrested!!

My parents are fighting it since the kid is old enough to make his own decisions on wheather on not to play football, and the rest of the kids who played ball are not claiming any injury or force to play the game. My brother is also lucky that no matter what this will all be sealed from his adult records since my parents know people. The family is suing for over 3 million from each kid in "damages" and "suffering" when this kid has never even gone to a therapist.

Everyones parents think this has been blown out of proportion and its costing the other 2 kids an arm and a leg in court fees and my parents attorney has taken this case on pro bono so theyre not being represented by the DA(but our DA is a good guy since this is a small area) and hes doing it to take a load off the DA. Its sad what this country has come to, but when people know they might win a few bucks by suing someone... hey they'll do it.

When I was about 10, someone my age was picking on my little cousin. I remember telling him something way worse than what your daughter said.

These situations really are ridiculous. School shootings and stabbings happen and people immediately assume a situation like this means the kid is destined to grow up and shoot up the school. Where people should be worried is when the dad threatens to stab the child for not getting him his beer and dinner.

I think Zero Tolerance is a simple solution to a complex problem and as such, inappropriate. What happened to people talking about their problems and finding resolution?

Amen.

Hahahaha, that is hilarious.