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.
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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.
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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.
After two years, prosecutors dropped charges.
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.
