News: Suspended from school for saying he'd killed his neighbour’s 'pet dinosaur'.

Is this a case of political correctness gone mad?

That’s what one lawyer is arguing after a teenager was arrested and suspended — for writing in a school assignment that he’d killed his neighbour’s ‘pet dinosaur’.

WCSC-TV reports that 16-year-old Alex Stone, from South Carolina in the US, said his class was asked to write about themselves for a writing assignment on Tuesday.

Stone reportedly wrote: “I killed my neighbour’s pet dinosaur… I bought the gun to take care of the business.”

And then Summerville High suspended him and called the police. Police searched his locker but found no weapons, but Stone was later charged with disorderly conduct after arguing with police officers.

Stone’s mother, Karen Gray, said she was angry about the way the matter had been handled.

“They put him in handcuffs,” she said. 

“I could understand if they made him rewrite it because he did have ‘gun’ in it… (But) I mean first of all we don’t have dinosaurs anymore. Second of all, he’s not even old enough to buy a gun,” she said.

She added that her son’s comments had been taken out of context, and that he had followed instructions by completing the assignment.

“What happened to freedom of speech?” she said.

The teenager told WCSC he didn’t want to go back to the school, and would prefer to be home-schooled.

“I regret it because they put it on my record, but I don’t see the harm in it,” Stone said.

“I think there might have been a better way of putting it, but I think me writing like that, it shouldn’t matter unless I put it out towards a person.”

The teenager’s lawyer David Aylor called Stone’s arrest “completely absurd”.

“This is a perfect example of ‘political correctness’ that has exceeded the boundaries of common sense,” Mr Aylor said yesterday.

The Summerville Police Department has disputed the teenager’s account of his arrest, NBC reports.

“The information that is being reported is grossly incorrect in reference to what led to the juvenile being charged,” Captain Jon Rogers said in a statement on Thursday.

“The charges do not stem from anything involving a dinosaur or writing assignment, but the student’s conduct.”

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