College Students Tell Police They Were "Playing" After Shooting Pellet Gun

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Two students will have to face the consequences after police say they brought a pellet gun to school.

Police say two students at La Roche College brought a pellet gun on campus and shot it.

No one was hit, but the students did violate the school's campus weapon ban. A student who saw the incident called police.

"He saw that they had shot the gun and realized it was a pellet gun and came to report that," said La Roche Dean of Students Colleen Ruefle.

Police say when questioned, the students said they were just "playing," but authorities aren't buying it.

"They represented to us that they viewed the guns as just being toys, in fact they weren't," said McCandless Police Chief Gary Anderson. "They were active weapons, in the sense of pellet guns, can do some bodily damage -- no question about that -- and they were just fooling around with the toy guns."

Both students, 21-year-old Haotian Liu and 23-year-old Dixiaonan Zhou, are Chinese exchange students who live off campus. They've been in the country for two years.

School officials still plan to talk to the two students and find out why they had the guns.

Both are charged with possession of a weapon on a school campus and could face expulsion.

RELATED LINKS
More Local News
More Police News