'He should have been in school': Boy, 10, accused of attempting to rob people with fake gun
ATALNTA - He should have been in school, but instead police said a 10-year-old boy was trying to rob women at an Atlanta apartment complex. The young boy was confronted by a security guard during the mid-morning attempt.
"You can look in his eyes and tell he wasn’t that type of person," said the security guard, who did not want his name released.
The man works security for the apartment complex off Fairburn Road in Atlanta. Thursday morning, he said residents ran into the leasing office with disturbing claims.
"One of the female residents, who is about 65, ran to the office, said the man is behind the building and said he just tried to rob me," the security guard explained.
The complex’s security quickly went to find the boy, who turned out to be just 10 years old. They confronted him and ordered him to drop his gun. At least, they thought it was a gun.
"It looked like a real gun that was a .38 or .357. Come to find out, it was an air soft gun he painted and put tape on the handle where you couldn’t tell it wasn’t a real gun," the security guard said.
The security guard said the disguise worked, and it was only on closer inspection that he found out the truth.
"I asked him if he knew the consequences in what he was doing, and he said, ‘No.’ He was just having fun," the security guard said.
The security guard said more needs to be done to help steer the youth in the right direction.
"This actually happened around 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. that morning which means he should have been in school," the security guard said.
He said it will take a team effort to prevent incidents like this from happening again.
"It’s easy to take a person’s life. Anyone can squeeze a trigger and kill them. It’s harder to save a person’s life meaning to get them to understand what they have," the security guard said.
Atlanta police said investigators are looking into the incident.