A 13-year-old Waiuku College student was hit in the face after another student accidentally fired a homemade gun he was showing off to friends.
The student had a third of an upper front tooth chipped off and some damage to lower teeth when a plastic projectile fired from
a "joey gun" hit him in the mouth.
"He'd seen this thing coming for him and he'd heard a bit of noise," said the mother of the student, who would not be named.
She was upset the weapon had been brought to school and questioned if the incident was handled properly.
It follows the high-profile walkout of about 200 Waiuku College students in February, after two of three students who attacked 16-year-old student Slade Butler on his way to school were back in class two days after being stood down.
In the latest case, which happened last week, the mother accepted it was an accident but questioned if the school had taken it seriously enough.
She said the student who brought the homemade weapon - basically a length of pipe with the finger of a rubber glove attached as a firing device at one end - was stood down for two days.
"They say they stood him down because he endangered the life of another student," she said.
"To me, if you do that, whether you take a knife to school, a weapon like that or a real gun or whatever, then I would have thought suspension would have been the least that they would do." She said communication from the school was limited and she felt "in the dark" as to whether protocol was followed.
Relieving principal Greg Taylor said he was confident the case was handled properly by staff in his absence. "Given there was no malice, it was an accident," he said. "My judgment would have been the same. The board wouldn't have expelled the boy, he's not a bad kid."
Last year, there were 6631 stand-down cases in Auckland, of which 94 related to weapons. Ministry of Education figures showed of 1412 suspension cases in Auckland last year, 33 involved weapons.
