8th-Grader Shot by Cops Had Pellet Gun

The 15-year-old boy shot dead by police at a middle school in Brownsville, Texas, yesterday was armed with a pellet gun that closely resembled a Glock handgun. Police say Jaime Gonzalez disobeyed numerous requests to drop the weapon and he was shot when he pointed the gun at officers, the Houston Chronicle reports. Police were called after Gonzalez assaulted another student, apparently at random, and school officials discovered the weapon.

A school district superintendent recalled Gonzalez as "a very positive young man," Time reports. "He worked well with everybody. Something unfortunately happened today that caused his behavior to go the way it went." The boy's grieving family say he was a good kid who had not been behaving strangely before the incident. His father says his son had three gunshot wounds: One in the shoulder, one in the rib cage—and one in the back of the head. "That’s the shot that bothers me the most,” he tells the Brownsville Herald. (More school shooting stories.)