In brief: Student, 11, brings gun to grade school

Salt Lake City – A Utah sixth-grader caught with a gun at school told administrators he brought the weapon to defend himself in case of an attack similar to last week’s mass shooting at a Connecticut school, officials said Tuesday.

The 11-year-old was being held in juvenile detention on suspicion of possessing a dangerous weapon and aggravated assault after other students at the suburban Salt Lake City elementary school told police he threatened them with the handgun.

Teachers and administrators at West Kearns Elementary School confronted the boy in class Monday after students reported the weapon, said Granite School District spokesman Ben Horsley. The boy had an unloaded gun and ammunition in his backpack, Horsley said.

The boy waved the gun at others during a morning recess, school officials said.

The .22-caliber handgun had been left at the boy’s home by a relative, Horsley said.

The boy told others his parents sent him to school with the gun for protection, which his parents adamantly deny, Horsley said.

“The family is rocked by this. They have been very forthcoming,” Horsley said.

‘In Cold Blood’ killers’ bodies exhumed

Lansing, Kan. – The bodies of the two men executed for the 1959 murders of a Kansas family that became infamous in Truman Capote’s true-crime book “In Cold Blood” were exhumed Tuesday in an effort to solve slayings of a Florida family killed weeks later.

Kyle Smith, deputy director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, said bone fragments were collected from the skeletal remains of Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, who were hanged for the murders of Herb and Bonnie Clutter and their children in Holcomb, Kan., on Nov. 15, 1959.

The fragments were collected at the request of a Sarasota County sheriff’s detective, who has been trying to determine whether Hickock and Perry Smith were responsible for the deaths of Cliff and Christine Walker and their two young children on Dec. 19, 1959, in their home in Osprey, about four hours northwest of Miami near Sarasota. Smith and Hickock fled to Florida after the Clutter murders.

Hickock and Perry Smith have been considered suspects in the Walker slayings since 1960, and Kyle Smith said Florida officials have expressed an interest several times over the decades in renewing the investigation. DNA testing now has advanced enough that older material can be analyzed more effectively, he said.

Broadwell won’t face stalking charge

Washington – The Justice Department has decided not to charge David Petraeus’ mistress, Paula Broadwell, with cyberstalking as part of its investigation into an email scandal that led to the resignation of the CIA director and storied general.

Broadwell’s lawyer, Robert Muse, gave the Associated Press a letter from U.S. Attorney Robert O’Neill that said no federal charges will be brought in Florida related to “alleged acts of cyberstalking.”

Petraeus resigned as CIA director in November after acknowledging the extramarital affair, which was exposed after Broadwell emailed Tampa socialite Jill Kelley, allegedly warning Kelley to stay away from Petraeus and Gen. John Allen, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

Kelley reported the emails to the FBI, triggering an investigation that led the FBI to Kelley’s emails to the married Allen, who is now under investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general.