A gun scare at a junior high school earlier this month apparently was not the brainstorm of a disturbed teen, but instead the twisted revenge scheme of his father's girlfriend.
According to the Montgomery County Police Reporter, on November 5, constables moonlighting as school security got a phone call tipping them off than a 13-year-old eighth grader had come to school with a pistol in his backpack. They were able to track down the kid and seize the unloaded gun.
The teen was hauled into an office for several hours' questioning, and ultimately, finally, the police believed him when he said he had no idea how the gun came to be in his backpack.
Tracing the phoned-in tip was the constables' next move.
They tracked the call to a convenience store not far from where the boy lived. Once there, the reviewed the store's surveillance tapes and saw that the call had been made by a woman in her twenties.
That led them to 26-year-old Heather Hodges, the live-in love of the boy's father. At first, Hodges attempted to deny making the call, but reportedly changed her tune on being confronted with the video evidence. She allegedly confessed to planting the gat, dropping the kid off, and then phoning in the bogus tip.
Hodges has been charged with two crimes: carrying a weapon on restricted premises and transfer of a handgun to someone under 18 years of age. She was already on probation for a theft charge from Conroe last year, and is now being held in the Montgomery County Jail with bonds set at $20,000.
According to the MCPR, the boy has been cleared, but his father plans to transfer him to a new school to give him a fresh start.