The Grady High School student who accidentally shot herself in the thigh Wednesday will be spending another night in jail.
Morgan Tukes, who was granted bond at a hearing Thursday morning, is being held because Atlanta police filed a warrant for her arrest for misdemeanor hit and run, Fulton County sheriff’s spokeswoman Tracy Flanagan said.
According to an APD incident report, Tukes rear-ended a city vehicle last October in the McDonald’s parking lot on Ponce de Leon Avenue.
Magistrate Judge Jessy Lall Bond set bond at $41,000 for Tukes, 17 on felony possession of a pistol by a minor and three misdemeanors: carrying a weapon within a school safety zone, reckless conduct and disruption of a public school. She’ll appear before a judge on the hit-and-run case Friday at 9 a.m.
Judge Lall ordered Tukes to stay 100 yards away from the Grady High campus, prohibited her from possessing a firearm and forbid firearms in the house where she’s staying. A hearing was set for March 14 in Fulton Superior Court.
Following Thursday’s hearing, the girl’s father, Navodus Tukes, said he was ready for his daughter to “come home,” adding that he hoped the Grady senior could return her focus on her studies in hopes of graduating later this spring.
School officials learned of the shooting when Tukes walked into the school clinic, bleeding, around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. Atlanta City School Superintendent Erroll Davis said the girl was late for class and was let into the Midtown school’s gymnasium by two other students.
While Davis noted Tukes told administrators she did not pass through the school’s metal detectors with the weapon — a pink .380-caliber handgun — parents expressed concern that a firearm had still been carried onto the campus.
“It’s ridiculous that something like this could happen,” parent Brunilda Nazario said.
According to several students interviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the metal detectors are functioning but are not closely monitored. For example, students are not required to remove rings or belts when passing through the detectors.
The assistant principal — not law enforcement — supervises the screening process, Davis said, adding they prefer placing school resource officers elsewhere.
“Our schools were not designed to be fortresses,” he said. “They were designed to be places of learning.”
Senior Imani Stanard said, “It’s not that hard to get anything into Grady.”
“Teachers do the searching but they don’t want to,” she said. “They’re here to teach, not to search students.”
Grady High remained on lockdown until noon. Parents were allowed to check their children out of school for the day, and about three dozen had done so by late morning.
Dimanche Crutcher said she was talking to his son on the phone while the school was on lockdown: “He seemed like he was shaken up a bit. They’re a little rowdy inside the building. The kids are more like ‘I’m ready to get out.’ It sounded like chaos inside.”
Tukes accidentally shot herself in the courtyard area near the parking lots, police said. School officials notified students about the shooting and parents were notified via robocalls soon after.
“Just walking around in school you never know what’s going to happen,” said student Exevian Crutcher, who saw the girl being rushed into an office and saw her bleeding from the leg. “People were traumatized by the fact that there was a gun [on campus] and everyone just wanted to get out.”
—Staff writer Mark Niesse contributed to this article.
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