New York: In a bizarre incident, a 16-year-old high school boy in the US was suspended and arrested for writing about killing his neighbour's pet dinosaur using a gun in an assignment.
Alex Stone, 16, was suspended from Summerville High School in South Carolina and arrested last week over the incident.
"I could understand if they made him rewrite it because he did have 'gun' in it," said mother Karen Gray.
"I mean first of all we don't have dinosaurs anymore. Second of all, he's not even old enough to buy a gun," she was quoted as saying by WCSC-TV.
Stone said he and his classmates were given an assignment last Tuesday to write a few sentences about themselves, and to list a "status" as if they were completing a Facebook post. The teen wrote "I killed my neighbor's pet dinosaur." In the status section, Stone said, he wrote "I bought the gun to take care of the business."
"I regret it because they put it on my record, but I don't see the harm in it," Stone said. "I think there might have been a better way of putting it, but I think me writing like that, it shouldn't matter unless I put it out towards a person."
His mother said that she was angry that school administrators did not call her before contacting police, who arrested her son and charged him with disorderly conduct after he argued with officers.
"I never heard from the school, never. They never called me," Gray said.
Attorney David Aylor, who is representing Stone, said his client's arrest over a creative writing assignment was "completely absurd," and is seeking to appeal the suspension and "proceed with the legal issues of (Stone's) arrest."
"This is a perfect example of 'political correctness' that has exceeded the boundaries of common sense," Aylor said in a statement.
"Students were asked to write about themselves and a creative Facebook status update - just days into the new school year - and my client was arrested and suspended after a school assignment," he said.
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