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South Carolina Student Arrested For "Killing Pet Dinosaur"

Posted by timothy on from the tell-me-again-about-our-troubled-youth dept.

Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes In South Carolina a 16-year old boy, Alex Stone, was arrested and charged with creating a disturbance at his school, as well as suspended, for choosing to write: "I killed my neighbor's pet dinosaur. I bought the gun to take care of the business," in response to a class writing assignment. The story has attracted international attention.

18 of 421 comments (clear)

  1. Land of insanity by qbast · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Only in America ...

  2. LOL by war4peace · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Only in 'Murica.
    Here' if a 16-year old writes something like that, everyone would have a good laugh.

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  3. Mandatory panic! by khasim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    a. He's a he.
    b. He's a teenager.
    c. He goes to a school.
    d. He wrote the word "gun" in a "fantasy" story.

    Mandatory panic! Alert the police! Search EVERYTHING! Connect the dots!

    Personally, I blame the teacher for not sufficiently explaining the limits of the assignment.

    1. Re:Mandatory panic! by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, based on the writeup it sounds like he could be guilty of nothing more than knowing his rights.

      He was questioned by police without his parents. That's not acceptable. He shouldn't be punished for anything that arose from an illegal interrogation. He may have simply refused to cooperate.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    2. Re:Mandatory panic! by BronsCon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I dunno, I robbed a bank once by walking in, unarmed, writing "gun" on a piece of paper, and then shooting everyone in the place with it. Once I'd shot all of them, there was nobody to trigger the alarm or stop me from walking out with all the money.

      Letting people write the word "gun" on a piece of paper is very dangerous.

      And yes, for those who can't detect satire, this really did happen. We should ban pens and paper so it doesn't happen again.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    3. Re:Mandatory panic! by meerling · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Irate? Yeah, I'd have become "irate" if some blithering idiot was accusing me of violating the law for a piece of fiction written for class in which his character (modeled as himself) hunted a species that became extinct millions of years ago. (Of course, being a "pet dinosaur" you could probably classify it as fantasy.)

      As to fiction including guns. Oh no! Go arrest EVERY AUTHOR ON THE PLANET!!!

      The ones disturbing the school were the police and the idiots that panicked over the short story/assignment. At least one person deserves to be fired.

      When I think back to the stories I wrote for class back in high school, morons like the ones at his school would have called out the police, fire department, FBI, NSA, NASA, Marines, Air Force, and MIB!

    4. Re:Mandatory panic! by flayzernax · · Score: 5, Insightful

      yeah, losing your shit is a sure fire way to demonstrate calm and respectful behavior to a young kid writing about *his* fantasies.

      if it was a girl she probably would have been treated differently too

      our culture is a culture of fear and cowardice :( plain and simple, when we all realise this collectively (lets hope it doesn't take a collective ass kicking) we'll grow up

      Until then, our empire is tiny and shitty compared to the aztecs and mighty vikings that came before it, we will see

    5. Re: Mandatory panic! by TheTurtlesMoves · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, but a lot of peoples reaction to the event will.

      --
      The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
    6. Re:Mandatory panic! by arth1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Exactly, the pen is mightier than the sword! Will someone think of the children having to witness these horrors!

      Google does. Their new e-mail filter might reject statements like the above depending on the word frequencies in spam du jour, because it contains the phrase "pen is".

      I wish I were only joking.

    7. Re:Mandatory panic! by lgw · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Through all of history, every place with a remotely hospitable climate was eventually governed by a nation with a strong military. If on government didn't have that, it would be conquered by one that did. There's no evidence that it's even possible to not have a strong central military for a long time (unless you live someplace where the environment is so hostile it's not worth anyone's effort to conquer, but sometimes even then).
       

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    8. Re:Mandatory panic! by Rick+Zeman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's one thing to say "no guns in school". It's quite another to ban any mention of them. This isn't China.

      Why the China bashing? It is not illegal to write a story about guns in China, and I have never heard of this sort of political knee jerk reaction there. An American is FOUR TIMES as likely to be arrested and imprisoned by their government as a Chinese citizen.

      Hey, did you see the Dalai Lama in Tiananmen Square? He was talking about all of the corruption in upper reaches of the Chinese government with some Maoists while he was on his way to the Falun Gong Meeting.

    9. Re:Mandatory panic! by hawkinspeter · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Unless you were there fighting the war, it's a bit disingenous to take on other people's war victories as your own. I'm a Brit, but I had nothing to do with World War II or any other war since then. Just being born on the same piece of land as someone else is a strange way of measuring your worth.

      --
      You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
  4. I thought this only happened in Florida by Issarlk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And as for the kid and his pet dinosaur killing, here's an even more disturbing news: so kids as young as maybe 8 are shooting at each other in pretend cowboy-indian or thief-policeman "games". Time to build more prisons for youngsters.

  5. Yes it is. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This isn't China.

    We have gone to idiotic mode here in the States - beyond plaid.

    We have been taken over by the lying bullying pundits - Hannity,Maddow, O'Reilly, Oberman, etc ....

    Our media isn't really state controlled as it is corporate controlled - the corporations use the government to solidify their idiocy.

    Even my beloved NPR doesn't escape my cynicism when the Koch brothers sponsor it along with many corporate sponsors - regardless of their political leanings.

    We are being bombarded by shit.

    Shit media.

    All of it.

    And it has become impossible for us to differentiate the shit from the Truth.

    Mix in 110 proof pundits like Hannity and Limbaugh, and we're fucked.

    I am trying to cut myself off from media - even the Internet.

    It is getting ridiculous.

    To paraphrase Thich Nhat Hanh, 'Don't watch the news. If it is really important, you will hear about it.'

    I don't mean to stick my head in the sand, but when I cannot get the facts - or I have to sift through countless media outlets to get it - I just have to say, "Fuck it! Let me take care of my neighbor!"

    1. Re:Yes it is. by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There's no better decision you can make, IMO, than to walk away from broadcast media, and newspapers, and all those centrally-controlled outlets for news. If you have a deep distrust of blogs, that can work for you. Find a blog or two of interest; look for ones that routinely correct stories when commenters point out flaws, avoid those that instead ban the commenters. As long as you keep your distrust of blogs, that's a good way to keep your head out of the sand.

      The only way to learn anything about current events is the combination of a hard-to-censor channel, a willingness to correct mistakes, and your own distrust of everything on that channel.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  6. Re:Debbil in de details by WaffleMonster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you read the details of the story, it becomes quite a bit less sensational.

    The details make it worse because not kissing police officers asses resulted in bullshit disturbance charges. (e.g. retaliation)

    Not only did the grownups at the school abuse their authority so did the police.

  7. Mod parent up! by khasim · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From TFA:

    Police told My Fox Chicago that Stone was difficult during questioning and they arrested him and charged him with disturbing the school.

    How did "the school" know about this? At most his teacher and the school principal and the regional/district/whatever superintendent should have been aware of the issue.

    If anyone was "disturbing" "the school" it would have been one of those three (or the cops) and they should be arrested.

    For a student, being "difficult during questioning" should (at most) result in expulsion AND NOT ARREST.

  8. Re:Debbil in de details by sjames · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In what way? 16 year old writes two clearly flippant sentences that cannot possibly be true. School officials, apparently too mentally ill to distinguish reality from fantasy, call the cops. Cops, apparently also mentally ill, question the boy as if what he wrote could possibly be a confession. They then arrest him for the perfectly natural outrage he expressed at being subjected to their madness. Then principal Nutty McCuckoo suspends him for a week over the incident that the school instigated.

    In what way is that not sensational?

    In a just world, the students and their parents will mock and ridicule the principal until he is forced to resign. He brought it upon himself by refusing to be more mature than the kids in his charge.