Donna St. George
Washington Post
Sunday, June 22, 2008
An alarm went off one night at Potowmack Elementary School in Sterling, and a surveillance camera recorded the scene: five intruders in masks and hoods darting through hallways and corridors, their assault rifles pointed.
In minutes, sheriff's deputies arrived, their own guns loaded and drawn.
Only after the gunmen were taken into custody did deputies discover that the assault rifles were replicas -- so-called "airsoft" guns that shoot lightweight plastic BBs -- and the intruders were 14-year-old boys. But during that tense confrontation June 2, 2006, fantasy and reality collided, the line blurred between teenagers who were pretending and deputies who were not.
No one was hurt in the Loudoun County school break-in, but that has not been the case everywhere. In the past several years in Maryland, Florida, Pennsylvania and Arkansas, young people with imitation guns have been killed by police who assumed they were armed with the real thing.
FULL ARTICLE @ Washington Post
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