FARMINGTON — An 8-year-old boy has admitted to putting a knife to a 6-year-old child’s throat and threatening him on a bus on May 27, the older boy’s father, Galen Brackley, said.

RSU 9 school resource officer Bridgette Gilbert investigated the incident and charged Brackley’s son with a misdemeanor charge of terrorizing.

The boy, a second-grader at Mallett School in Farmington, admitted to a teacher what he had done, Brackley said.

He has to meet with juvenile corrections officer Joan Dawson once a month and stay away from the kindergartner, his father said. He also has to do what the officer and his parents tell him to do.

The boy was suspended for 10 days and went back to school Friday. He will attend Monday, the last day of school. He will also attend summer school.

Brackley “has agreed to a re-entry plan to school that will safely allow his child to come back to school on Friday and Monday, the last two days of school,” RSU 9 Superintendent Tom Ward said Wednesday. “The plan takes into consideration this student’s safety needs and the safety needs of all students at Mallett elementary.”

Brackley said the incident came about because his son was tired of being bullied and took matters into his own hands.

“He shouldn’t have done it the way he did, but I don’t think he knew what else to do,” he said. “I told him it was something that was really, really wrong.”

Ward said school officials have found no proof of bullying.

The knife was one that is on an oval key chain that is about as thick as a quarter and about 1 to 1½ inches long; it has a bottle opener on the other side, Brackley said.

Brackley uses the knife to work on remote-control vehicles. He did not know his son had taken it to school, he said.

His son was sitting in his assigned seat on the bus — two seats behind the bus driver — and the kindergartner was in the seat in front of his son, he said.

A crisis worker from Evergreen Behavioral Services asked his son if he knew what killing meant, and he said no, Brackley said.

His son has special needs, some behavioral issues and has post-traumatic stress disorder from an incident a while back that scared him, the father said.

The day the knife incident happened, he was having a good day, Brackley said.

He and his wife are keeping their son on a daily routine that includes chores and a bedtime, he said.

The two young boys’ families live in the same apartment complex and are neighbors. Brackley said that when he sees the younger boy and his brother out, he moves his children to another spot to keep to the officer’s order and prevent any more antagonism among the children.

dperry@sunjournal.com

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