A California teacher who was a reserve officer for the local police department and trained in firearms accidentally fired a loaded gun in his classroom on Tuesday.
The teacher, who worked as a math teacher at Seaside High School in Monterey County, appeared to have been “providing instruction related to public safety” for another class he taught called administration of justice, according to a police statement.
Instead, the teacher fired the gun into the ceiling, and some kind of “debris or fragmentation” struck a 17-year-old student in the neck, police told the Monterey County Weekly. The student’s father told KSBW 8 that the student returned home from school with bullet fragments in his neck.
The Sand City police chief said the teacher had been a reserve officer for 11 years and that he was “positive and professional.” The officer told the Monterey County Weekly that the teacher had his last gun safety training less than a year ago.