Parent recalls facing gun during school drop-off

Karolyn Browden is still shaken by the encounter earlier this week at Arabia Mountain High School when she said a parent pulled a gun on her as she waited to drop her child off.

“'Are you ready for this? Are you ready for this?'” Browden said Claudia Flowers-Vassell, who is now in DeKalb County sheriff's custody, repeatedly asked her around 7:45 a.m. Tuesday.

The woman, driving her 2008 Honda Civic toward Browden's vehicle, had suddenly stopped next to Browden before leaving the Lithonia school's drop-off area.

Browden said she didn’t realize Flowers-Vassell was talking to her at first.

“The kids said, ‘Mommy, a lady is looking at you and she’s saying something to you,’” Browden, of Decatur, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Saturday.

Browden said she’d never met Flowers-Vassell in the three years she’d taking her child to the school on Browns Mill Road.

“What are you talking about?” Browden asked the woman as the two stared at each other.

Browden then turned and asked her daughter and a friend in the vehicle if they knew Flowers-Vassell. They didn’t.

“I got something for you,” the woman then told Browden, who said a heated exchange ensued. At one point the woman said something about “staying in your lane,” said Browden, whose vehicle was the last of four or five cars in the drop-off lane at the time.

Flowers-Vassell then showed Browden a gun inside some kind of wrap, Browden said. “I asked her what she was going to do with it.”

Flowers-Vassell took the gun out the wrap and repeated, “I got something for you,” Browden said.

Flowers-Vassell then drove off, said Browden, who wrote down her license plate number and called 911. In the meantime her daughter and friend ran to report the incident to Principal LaShawn McMillan.

Flowers-Vassell, 39, has been charged with three counts of pointing or aiming a firearm at another person. She remained at the DeKalb County Jail on Saturday, with bond set at $1,000 on each count.

The suspect refused to discuss the incident when questioned about it on Wednesday, according to Sgt. Jeff Perkins of DeKalb Schools Public Safety.

Perkins said several photos were taken of Flowers-Vassell during the interview, and Browden and the two youths with her later identified the Lithonia woman from a photo lineup.

“She didn’t look like she was in her right mind,” Browden told the AJC on Saturday in looking back on the incident.

The encounter has left Browden, who suffers from a muscular disorder, and her daughter, who she said has a heart condition, both nervous and afraid, she said.