FRISCO, Texas — The classroom was loud that day, and Hasan doesn’t like loud.
So the 10-year-old boy decided to go on a walk through Frisco’s Bledsoe Elementary. His specialized education plan — required because of his autism — allowed for sensory breaks.
On his way out the door, he said something. His fifth-grade teacher quickly reported what she heard on the morning of March 29, 2022: “Maybe I should bring a gun to school, then maybe they will listen to me.”
These words — which his parents say were grossly misunderstood — would derail Hasan’s childhood and education for the next two years. They would plunge his family into a haze of anxiety, costing tens of thousands of dollars to navigate the juvenile justice system. Ultimately, they would force them to question what it means to raise a child in America.
“The way everybody handled the situation was wrong,” his mother said. The family filed a lawsuit against Frisco ISD Sept. 30.
One of the complex consequences of school shootings is young children are increasingly facing criminal repercussions for language deemed threatening, state data shows.
Hasan was arrested and charged with a Class A misdemeanor for the threat of exhibiting a firearm at school. The charge doesn’t require the person to display a gun or to have access to one.
He became one of roughly 1,110 Texas children referred to the justice system for this misdemeanor charge in the last six fiscal years, according to state juvenile justice data. More children were referred for this charge in 2023 — after the Uvalde massacre — than in any other recent year.
About half of the such cases involved kids between 10 and 13 years old.
Civil rights advocates and juvenile attorneys can point to examples of kids, like Hasan, who have disabilities and may not fully understand the actions that land them in big trouble. They know young children sometimes say things they don’t mean.
Law enforcement officials say the stakes are too high to dismiss potential threats as jokes or misunderstandings.
“It goes without saying that concern for school safety is at an all-time high,” Frisco police spokesman Grant Cottingham said. “Every school threat is taken seriously and fully investigated.”
Some students who make threats have both the means and intent to carry them out. The recent case of a Georgia teen who opened fire at his high school — killing two students and two teachers — was a reminder.
In the weeks since that shooting, schools across the country faced a surge of reported threats. School officials and police have lamented photos of weapons and menacing words zooming across social media, launching police into overtime to track down what typically proved to be non-credible.
In September alone, police arrested at least 40 Texas students from elementary to high school because of threats. The details and outcomes of those cases may never become public because juvenile records are largely confidential.
In Hasan’s case, his parents provided The Dallas Morning News rare access to observe their son’s legal saga, providing a window into how such cases are handled and their impact on children.
The News reviewed Frisco school records and audio as well as psychological evaluations supplied by the family, along with court documents from the lawsuit against the school district. A reporter spent hours interviewing parents Tahmina and Mohammed at their home and accompanied them to court. They requested The News withhold their last name to shield their son from stigmatization. Hasan is identified by his middle name.
Frisco ISD and Frisco Police department officials declined multiple interview requests over several months about Hasan’s case but provided statements. They said they could not discuss specifics, citing ongoing legal proceedings and privacy law. Frisco is a booming suburb about 30 miles north of Dallas.
After his arrest, Hasan said over and over he didn’t want to hurt anyone, that he was being silly, that he would never bring a gun to school, that he didn’t know the police would come, that he was sorry.
On that March day, a school resource officer questioned Hasan before Tahmina learned her son was in trouble. When school officials contacted her, she rushed to the campus.
Tahmina watched as Hasan was loaded into a police cruiser in the Bledsoe Elementary parking lot. Handcuffs clanked around his skinny wrists.
Police fingerprinted the boy and took his mugshot. He stood just over 4 feet tall. Hasan wasn’t sure whether he should smile, like he normally would for a picture, or make a mean face. He said he thought mugshots were only for burglars or serial killers.
Tahmina couldn’t comprehend: Her family doesn’t own guns, so her son had no way of bringing a firearm to class.
School staffers were supposed to be well-versed in Hasan’s autism and how it shapes the way he speaks.
“Why,” Tahmina still wonders, “were they so quick to bring in the police?”
Evaluating threats
Texas schools deal with thousands of potential threats each year.
In response, the Legislature in 2019 mandated campuses conduct “school behavioral threat assessments” to investigate and assess troubling behavior.
Celina Bley, who oversees training at the Texas School Safety Center, said when officials learn of a threat, they must first figure out: Does this present an imminent danger? Does the student pose an immediate risk to themselves or others?
The vast majority don’t, according to Texas Education Agency data from 2023. For those cases, schools must take steps to prevent behavior from escalating. This can include referring the student to counseling.
Should the student have a special education plan, schools should bring in staff familiar with the child to weigh in. Threat assessment teams must train all members and should include people from multiple areas, such as school administration, special education and school safety.
Hasan’s family alleges his assessment was conducted by someone with “absolutely no training” on how to administer it, according to court records.
A police report from the day of the incident indicates Hasan’s counselor talked to him before the boy sat down with a school resource officer. The counselor noted that Hasan told her he didn’t care about his classmates’ feelings, according to the report.
The officer then interviewed Hasan without a parent present. If Tahmina had been there, she said she could have provided context about how her son communicates. At times, Hasan can appear to display little emotion or blurt out at the wrong situation.
By the time police talked to Hasan, the lawsuit alleges, district staff hadn’t told the officer that the boy was autistic and that his disability sometimes caused him to say inappropriate things.
“They didn’t do their job,” said Marty Cirkiel, one of the family’s lawyers.
There was spotty implementation of the threat assessment law in schools across the state, according to a 2023 analysis from Texas Appleseed, a justice-focused nonprofit.
Andrew Hairston, one of the report authors, emphasized children are growing up in a world that can be violent and gun-obsessed.
“There is, at so many levels, this unwillingness to interrogate, ‘Do you really think that this kid meant that they were going to bring a gun to school? Or are they just reflecting what they’ve seen?’” he said.
Still, educators and police know failing to intervene could be devastating.
Last month, a 14-year-old fatally shot two teenagers and two teachers at Georgia’s Apalachee High School. Law enforcement had investigated the shooter previously over threatening posts more than a year before. His father told authorities then the family owned guns but that the boy didn’t have unfettered access to them.
Just the perception of a threat can trigger terror and anxiety.
Districts across Texas have canceled classes so officers can investigate sinister comments posted on social media or scrawled on bathroom walls. This school year began with several online threats going viral statewide, frightening families, disrupting campus activities and straining police resources.
“We all knew that you couldn’t say ‘gun’ or ‘bomb’ on a plane or in an airport,” said Shane Wallace, director of the Texas Association of School Resource Officers. “Now it’s the same way in a school. You start saying it and people, they freak out a little bit — and rightfully so — because of what’s happened.”
Hasan’s parents know their son said the wrong thing on that March day. Now, every time there’s a school shooting, Tahmina makes sure to explain to Hasan how serious it is.
Still, they believe the school’s response to his words was extreme.
Chain reaction
When Tahmina immigrated to America from Bangladesh almost 25 years ago, she delighted in her new home. Everyone seemed respectful, peppering conversations with “ma’am” or “sir.” Life was orderly. She remembers thinking: No one forms a line better than Americans.
Together with Mohammed, she became a citizen. The couple earned their engineering and computer science degrees. They bought a two-story house near an elementary school, drawn to the highly rated district of roughly 67,000 students.
Now, they were Googling criminal attorneys. They could never have imagined something like this happening to their family in Bangladesh.
Hasan gave his side of the story. His classmates were bothering him, he told his parents. He’d faced bullying before, which his family alleges was not taken seriously by school staff.
After talking to their son, Hasan’s parents came to believe his teacher misunderstood him when she reported his words.
Hasan explained that he imagined he could get his classmates to listen to him by “riding them,” like he was a cowboy and they were horses. The picture in his head prompted him to say he wished he had a gun. That’s what a cowboy would have, he reasoned.
He didn’t want to shoot anyone, he promised his parents. He wished he could build a time machine and travel back to that day. Just take a walk and come back to class as a new man, he now wishes he could say to his younger self.
After the incident, the elementary school immediately suspended Hasan with plans to send him to a disciplinary alternative school for 45 days.
Before that could happen, a school committee met to determine whether Hasan’s autism drove his behavior. When a child with special needs is removed from school, campus leaders are legally required to consider if the student’s actions were a “manifestation” of their disability.
The committee met on April 8, 2022, and considered several factors, documents show, including that Hasan had no other serious disciplinary incidents that school year.
Ultimately, the group ruled Hasan’s behavior “WAS caused by or did have a direct and substantial relationship to the student’s disability.”
This meant Hasan would not go to alternative school. He could return to his normal classroom, with some additional support.
The committee’s decision would not, however, shield him from what played out in the justice system.
‘You’re headed to jail’
Civil rights advocates worry about a deepening connection between Texas schools and law enforcement.
State legislators’ response to the Robb Elementary shooting was a law mandating an armed guard, ideally a police officer, on every campus. As the Parkland and Uvalde shootings demonstrate, a police presence doesn’t always make a difference.
Arrest rates more than doubled in schools with a police presence compared to similar schools without police, a recent federal report found. And data shows school-related arrests disproportionately affect children with disabilities.
Roughly two-thirds of the 30 Frisco ISD students referred to law enforcement in the 2021-22 school year had a disability, according to the most recent figures provided by the district.
Frisco police assigned to schools take a 40-hour crisis intervention training course and a 40-hour student-based law enforcement course, which covers working with children with special needs.
The police department launched a campaign — Your Words Matter — to impress on students the ramifications of making threats.
“If you jokingly state that you’re going to blow up the school, rest assured: we will find you; you will be arrested; and you’re headed to jail,” a Frisco officer says in one video, uploaded on YouTube in May 2023.
Texas must ensure its response to school shooting fears “doesn’t widen the net for youth into the justice system, but instead widens the net for those youth into mental health services,” said Elizabeth Henneke, who leads the Lone Star Justice Alliance.
Several states are strict in their approach to threats. Florida law enforcement has long taken a hardline, which a local sheriff recently pushed a step further by publishing the name and mugshot of an 11-year-old boy accused of making a school threat.
In Tennessee, a 2023 “zero tolerance” law requires districts to expel students for a year if they threaten mass violence. Families are suing over that rule, saying their children were arrested based on misinterpreted conversations that posed no danger.
Texas spent years moving away from zero-tolerance policies that disproportionately removed children of color and students with disabilities from the classroom. Now some lawmakers are pushing for disciplinary crackdowns on misbehavior.
While the overall number remains small, referrals for the charge Hasan faced — threatening to exhibit or use a firearm — are on the rise, according to county-level data compiled by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department. There were 386 referrals in 2023, a 40% increase from the year before.
Referrals for “terroristic threat” grew by roughly 35% in the same time period, spiking to 1,957.
In the Texas criminal justice system, 17-year-olds are generally considered adults.
To Hasan’s parents, it feels like children are being arrested while adults shrug off their responsibility for a uniquely American problem. Why do politicians reject stronger gun laws, they wonder, when school shootings keep happening?
“It’s grown-ups who need zero tolerance,” Mohammed said.
Emotional turmoil
Through the window, Hasan saw an official-looking person standing at his family’s front door. He ran to his room, shouting: I didn’t do anything, Mommy!
It had been nearly three months since his arrest.
His mother assured him he wasn’t going to be taken away. Hasan just needed to sign something: an affidavit ordering the boy to appear in court.
By then, the now-11-year-old had stopped sleeping in his own room. Tahmina suffered through health problems spurred by the stress. Mohammed struggled to concentrate at work.
Hasan was their miracle baby, who completed the family after Tahmina suffered several miscarriages. He was a gentle child who cried during ASPCA’s animal welfare commercials. He didn’t play with toy guns, instead gravitating toward Marvel superhero action figures.
At 8 years old, Hasan was diagnosed with autism. His parents worried about how to prepare him for an independent life. Their son dreamed of attending Stanford University and becoming the greatest scientist of all time.
A criminal case threatened that future, they worried. Their boy now struggled to be alone.
They put him into therapy.
“[Hasan] is an emotionally fragile boy and has deteriorated significantly with the stress of legal involvement,” the psychologist wrote in an assessment. “In our legal system, there are guidelines to determine if an individual can be held accountable for their actions: Does the individual know right from wrong? Is the individual able to understand the charges against him? Is the individual able to participate in his own defense?
“Clearly, [Hasan] is not able to discern any of these due to his disability.”
Juvenile prosecutor Karen Anders, who declined interview requests, did not drop the charge against Hasan. The court proposed probation.
To Tahmina, that initially sounded okay, but Mohammed wanted a full dismissal.
“He doesn’t know the crime,” Mohammed explained. “We already have our hands full to give him a full life. … He has a big mountain to climb. And now we’re talking about probation?”
Mohammed didn’t want his son strapped with a record, even a juvenile one that could be sealed. A criminal charge could launch the boy into the school-to-prison pipeline. Mohammed stressed that this was an injustice.
Tahmina agreed and wrote a letter to Anders, begging her to drop the charge.
“If any punishment is conferred on him,” Tahmina wrote, “it will be a punishment on his autism spectrum disorder.”
Constant stress
Hasan started middle school still in trouble with the law.
His parents no longer trusted Frisco schools to educate him — or to protect him.
They enrolled Hasan in virtual school, though it pained them to take him away from other kids. To compensate, they loaded his schedule with extracurriculars, paying hefty bills for coding club, swim practice, boxing — along with therapy.
The family also said they spent more than $24,000 on criminal defense attorneys, who sometimes gave conflicting advice.
Every so often, they’d get summoned to court. Tahmina would dress Hasan in the blue suit they bought just for these occasions.
That’s what he was wearing on a fall day last year, inside a drab Denton County building, as his family waited to meet their lawyer.
The family’s previous attorney had filed a motion that slowed the case and opened the possibility of court-ordered, inpatient treatment. The thought terrified his parents.
So they hired their third new lawyer.
After a private meeting with the prosecutor, attorney Mike Price brought the family mixed news: The case would not be dismissed that day. The court wanted Hasan to continue receiving outpatient therapy, saying they needed further analysis to steer next steps.
Price explained the court’s point of view: What drives them is avoiding a school shooting. They must feel certain nothing bad is going to happen — now or in the future.
As they drove home, Tahmina tried thinking of the case from the court’s perspective.
“I see they’re doing what they need to do,” she told her husband. “But why did the school put him in this position? What the school did, I can not forgive.”
Is that justice?
Shortly after that court appearance, in the fall of 2023, the family filed a complaint against Frisco ISD with the Texas Education Agency, alleging violations of federal disability law. They said the district failed to provide Hasan an appropriate special education plan, contributing to his arrest.
The family hired Andrea Koch, an attorney specializing in education law, who questioned Hasan’s former teacher, Celeste Chavira — the one who overheard Hasan’s comments.
Police records list Chavira as the victim of Hasan’s alleged crime.
Did Chavira consider herself Hasan’s victim, Koch asked during an April meeting, according to administrative documents. “No,” the teacher responded. She was not afraid of the boy, she told the lawyer.
“His parents have spent an enormous amount of money on lawyers. He’s been at the mercy of the juvenile criminal court system. He’s been traumatized. He’s had a lot of regressive behaviors, and the possibility still remains that he’ll be punished for what he said that day,” Koch told Chavira.
She asked Chavira: Is that justice?
“In my personal opinion, no,” the teacher responded.
Koch went on: “As a victim listed in this police report in the case, do you believe it’s a good use of taxpayer money and resources to continue prosecuting [Hasan]?”
“In my personal opinion, no,” Chavira said.
The teacher did not respond when The News tried to reach her via phone calls and text messages.
Tahmina felt broken. She didn’t think the teacher’s words could make any difference. The damage was already done.
Plus, pursuing their cases against the district was costly: Mohammed estimated they spent another $40,000 on cases against the district so far, on top of the $24,000 that went toward fighting Hasan’s criminal charge.
The second anniversary of their ordeal came and went — and their next court date loomed.
Days before they were scheduled to appear, attorney Mike Price’s name popped up on Tahmina’s phone.
“I just got off phone with the prosecutor,” he texted. “After a discussion and thorough review of the file, she is going to dismiss this case.
“It’s over.”
Tahmina screamed so loud Mohammed thought someone had died. Instead, he saw his wife running toward him, joyous.
After 745 days, gone was the feeling that lived for so long on Tahmina’s chest. After 745 days, the crushing panic that her son could be taken was lifted.
Still, the family doesn’t feel whole. Hasan’s confidence is shattered, his parents say. He stopped believing in his Stanford dream. The 10-year-old boy who said he wanted to be the greatest scientist of all time is now a 13-year-old doing science classes from his bedroom.
Tahmina and Mohammed are afraid of sending their son back to school in Frisco — or any in-person school. They’ve considered moving.
They still question, months after the dismissal, why it happened. They think often about the way their country’s love — and fear — of guns shaped their son’s world.
“We call this a first-world country? Where we treat our children like this and criminalize them?” Tahmina asked.
“What kind of country is that?”
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.
©2024 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
