A Flushing third-grader sold his father’s loaded, 9mm handgun to a classmate. “I can’t believe my son took it (the gun) to school. It was my fault,” the father said. “Thank God no one was hurt.”
Ignacio Galvan, 54, was charged with criminal possession of a weapon and endangering the welfare of a child at his April 29 arraignment at Queens Criminal Court.
Galvan, who pleaded guilty in 2007 to misdemeanor criminal possession of a forged instrument for possessing a fake green card, was held in lieu of $3,000 bail.
Galvan’s eight-year-old son carried the illegal handgun to P.S. 107 in Flushing on April 28, where he agreed to sell the weapon with the scratched-out serial number to another boy in his class for $3.50, police said.
The buyer’s mom told reporters her son thought he was buying a toy, “He gave the kid the money at the beginning of the day.” Later that day, Galvan’s son pulled the gun out of his backpack and put it in her son’s backpack.
The mom said when her son arrived home he told her, “I think it’s real.”
“Oh, my God,” the mom said. “I could see it was a .9mm and I started flipping out.” She called school officials and told them that her son had carried a loaded gun home in his backpack. “They told me to bring my son – and the gun back to the school.”
A school administrator alerted police at the 109th Precinct, who recovered the weapon.
When Galvan was arrested, he told investigators he purchased the gun illegally eight years ago, from a friend in Jackson Heights who charged him about $350 for the weapon, police sources said. “I bought it for protection. I never fired it, or oiled it or used it since then,” Galvan said. “I kept it in the garage so no one would get hurt.”
Galvan told investigators he brought the gun into the house a few days before the incident, after his wife told him someone had tried to break in through a side door at the family home, the sources said.
“I put the safety on and I put it on top of the refrigerator,” Galvan said. “I didn’t think anyone knew it was there. I didn’t think my son would be able to reach it.”
“This just underscored the scourge of guns that we see,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said. “The eight-year-old boy has been arrested. Here you have a young boy who sees a gun in his house, and sells it.”
The boy who bought the gun has been suspended from school and the seller may appear this week in Queens Family Court to face weapons possession charges. The gun contained three live rounds. Police at the 109th Precinct recovered another live round on the floor at the elementary school, Kelly said.