KNIFE IN LUNCH BAG GETS GIRL SUSPENDED, ARRESTED.

Byline: Associated Press

Eleven-year-old Charlotte Kirk thought she was doing a good thing by helping her mom pack her lunch. The sixth-grader included a steak knife in her lunch box so she could cut up her chicken.

But after asking a teacher if she could use the knife, Charlotte ended up suspended from school, threatened with expulsion and arrested on a charge of possessing a weapon on school grounds.

The school district decided Friday not to expel the honor student after she showed up at a hearing with her lawyer and a handful of supportive letters from her counselor and teachers. Charlotte can return to class Monday - but will be on probation, and still faces a hearing in family court on the charge.

Charlotte said it was all a misunderstanding - she packed the smooth-edged steak knife with her lunch Oct. 18 because ``Mom was busy, and Dad had gone to work.''

But after a friend in the cafeteria spotted the knife and suggested that it might not be allowed, Charlotte went to higher authorities, and got a lecture from a teacher and a guidance counselor.

``I never took it out of the box,'' Charlotte said. She tried to eat her lunch, tearing the chicken with her fingers. ``But I didn't eat a lot,'' she said. ``I was too upset.''

That afternoon, as she and her father, Carl Kirk, were leaving Hopkins Middle School, a deputy sheriff came, put her in his cruiser and drove away - not allowing her father to ride along.

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Photo

Photo: Charlotte Kirk, 11, of Columbia, S.C. stands with at torney Benjamin Wofford after a hearing on her suspension for a steak knife.

Associated Press