A public school in Coventry, R.I., suspended a student from school for three days after he brought in a small, gun-shaped keychain that he'd won at an amusement park.
Keith Bonanno, father of 12-year-old Joseph Lyssikatos, thinks his son's punishment was over-the-top.
"It was clearly a toy you would get in a bubble at a gumball machine," Bonanno told local radio station WPRO on Friday, the day after Joseph was suspended. "This is bordering on insanity over here."
Bonnano said he and his wife tried to reason with officials at Alan Shawn Feinstein Middle School but were told they were "lucky" that Joseph hadn't been expelled.
The reason for the suspension, according to Coventry Patch (which, like The Huffington Post, is owned by AOL), is that the middle school has a zero-tolerance policy for guns or gun replicas.
NBC local affiliate WJAR-TV reported that Joseph's suspension means he will miss the New England Common Assessment Program, an annual standardized test.
Neither school officials nor the district superintendent returned The Huffington Post's requests for comment.
Coventry, a small town of about 34,000 people, near the state capitol of Providence, is a little over 100 miles from Newtown, Conn., the site of one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history.
(Hat tip, bluto36 on Reddit)
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