Days after New York passed one of the toughest gun control laws in the U.S., the New York Police Department (NYPD) arrested the mother of a seven-year-old elementary school boy who took a handgun into school.
According to police, the boy, a second-grader whose name was withheld, put a .22-caliber handgun and a flare gun in his backpack and took them to Wave Preparatory Elementary School in Far Rockaway.
Police have arrested the boy's mother, Deborah Farley, 53, who faces charges of criminal possession of a weapon and endangering the welfare of a child, among others.
When Farley realized the weapon was missing, she ran out to get the boy under the pretense of a dentist appointment. When her son told her that he had given the weapon to another boy, she had no choice but to tell the principal.
All students in the elementary school were told to stay inside their classrooms, and students said afterwards that they were fearing the worst.
The gun was later found, the New York City Education Department confirmed in a statement.
"I thought we were going to get killed," Javier Ferrufino, an 11-year-old in fifth grade, told the New York Times. "We went to the back of the classroom. I hid with my friend behind some computers."
The incident comes nearly a month after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., when a 20-year-old gunman with chronicled mental health issues gunned down 20 children and six school faculty members after he stormed the school armed with several assault weapons.
The tragedy has since sparked a heavy gun control debate across the nation, with thousands signing petitions to the White House calling for tougher gun control policies while pro-gun advocates have opposed such measures.
Earlier this week, New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law a new rigid gun control law that added more assault weapons to the state's list of banned assault firearms, including prohibiting semiautomatic pistols and files with military-style features. The Bushmaster AR-15 used in the Newtown shooting is classified under that ban in New York State.
By passing the law, New York became the first state to adopt gun control measures in the wake of the Newtown massacre while President Obama on Wednesday proposed his own legislation on broader gun control measures across the country. Those measure call for an assault weapons ban and background checks for all gun buyers.