10:36 AM ET
Boys make the right move with loaded gun in theater
With the horrific news involving guns from Newtown, Connecticut, in the past week, heres a story with a happy ending and one that illustrates how kids can be more responsible than adults when it comes to weapons.
On Wednesday morning in Tillamook, Oregon, a city of 5,000 near the Pacific Ocean, a group of seventh-grade students were on a field trip to the local Coliseum Theatre to watch "The Hobbit." The outing was a reward for getting good grades.
It turns out these kids were more than book-smart.
When Kolton McKinney pulled his seat down, something fell from it.
He sat down in his chair and I heard a clunk and I looked down and there it was, Koltons classmate, Levi Crabtree, told CNN affiliate KGW in Portland.
The gun the boys found in the theater.
It was a gun, a small-caliber, semi-automatic pistol. It was fully loaded with a round in the chamber, Tillamook Police Chief Terry Wright said.
Levi and Kolton didnt touch the weapon. They alerted a school staffer who was on the field trip, who then alerted police.
Why didnt the boys pick up the firearm?
"I'm a Boy Scout and Kolton and me took a hunter safety class. One of the rules is that you treat all guns as if they're loaded," Levi told KPTV.
Who would do that? Seriously, theres a bunch of people that go to that theater and they put a gun in there, Kolton told KGW.
Somebody whos careless and reckless, Wright said.
Police told KPTV that a man went to the theater on Wednesday night asking if anyone had found his gun and turned it in to the lost and found. Hed lost it the night before in the theater.
The man, who has a Tillamook County concealed handgun license, never notified police hed lost the weapon, KPTV reported.
Luckily, the two Tillamook Junior High School students were thinking more clearly.
"Our students reacted exactly like we would hope and that is they recognized that is was a gun, recognized that they needed to stay away and contact a teacher immediately," Tillamook school Superintendent Randy Schild told KPTV. "I hope this is a learning opportunity not only for our students, but any students that see it on TV or anywhere else."
Police did not identify the man who lost the gun but said the case was being referred to the county sheriffs office, which could then forward it to the district attorney.
We forward our compliments to two smart seventh-graders.
