10-YEAR-OLD CHARGED WITH COCAINE POSSESSION

GIBSONTON - A fourth-grader is accused of having cocaine at school.
His family disputes the arrest.

A 10-year-old boy was charged Wednesday with possession of a small
amount of cocaine at Gibsonton Elementary School.

But the child's mother and grandmother say the fourth-grader
shouldn't have been charged because another student found the drug and
said it belonged to the boy.

``We don't do drugs in this house,'' said the boy's
grandmother.

According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office and the school
district, several classmates saw the cocaine in the boy's possession.
A student then told a teacher. The cocaine, 0.2 grams, was found while
the boy and his classmates were in class, said Mark Hart, spokesman
for the Hillsborough County School District.

``He did not get the drug at the school,'' Hart said. ``Nothing like
that has happened at the school before.'' The boy has been suspended
for 10 days, effective immediately, Hart said. The school board will
decide later whether to transfer the child to a different school.

The boy told his family a different story. At their home on Wednesday
afternoon, his mother and grandmother said he told them he was walking
to breakfast with his classmates when a student who was behind him
picked up a bag from the ground and said it belonged to the boy.

His family said the boy has Attention Deficit Hypertension Disorder,
but never had any behavioral problems until he started attending
Gibsonton Elementary last month. In the short time he has been at the
school, he's been suspended for seven days, the mother and grandmother
said, once for kicking a teacher and the other time for threatening
students. The family is seeking to place him in another school.

``They are making a criminal out of my child,'' the grandmother
said.

Hart and Detective Lisa Haber, a spokeswoman for the sheriff's office,
said there is no evidence that he was using the drug or that he was
trying to sell it. He was taken to the Juvenile Assessment Center in
Tampa and then released to his mother's custody.

In the last three years, 166 Hillsborough County students have been
expelled or transferred to an alternative school for drug possession.
None of the students was in elementary school.