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A Texas father has been arrested after his four-year-old son brought a loaded handgun to school. John F. Kennedy Elementary School in Corpus Christi was placed on lockdown around 9 a.m. on Wednesday (August 31) morning as an off-duty police officer secured the firearm.
"While we do not believe that students and staff were in any kind of imminent danger, as a precaution, the campus had increased police presence and maintained a higher level of security at the school until the Corpus Christi Police Department gave us an 'all clear' at 10:30 a.m.," West Oso Independent School District Superintendent Conrado Garcia wrote in a letter to parents, according to CNN.
Officers went to the home of the boy's parents and took his father, 30-year-old Paul Torres, into custody. He is facing charges of making a firearm accessible to children and abandoning or endangering a child.
Authorities did not provide details about how the young boy managed to get a hold of the gun.
"The Corpus Christi Police Department wants to remind all our citizens to ensure that firearms are safely stored. We recommend that all guns are unloaded, trigger locked, and in a locked gun safe, or pistol box with the ammunition locked away separately," officials said.