Police respond to gun call

Spokane Valley Police responded to a call of two men brandishing a gun Thursday morning, only to find that the gun was a realistic fake.

A 911 caller reported two men in a beige car pointing a gun at his house just before 8 a.m. in the 11400 block of East 30th Ave., said police spokesman Cpl. Dave Reagan in a press release. Several officers arrived just as three University High School students in a truck pulled up behind the beige car.

Believing the two vehicles were part of the same group, police ordered everyone out of both vehicles at gunpoint, Reagan said. The occupants of the car turned out to be teenage boys with a soft-air pistol designed to look like a silver semi-automatic pistol. The teens had either removed or painted over the orange tip on the barrel of the gun that identified it as a fake, Reagan said. A soft-air pistol shoots plastic pellets but has a working ammunition magazine.

The gun-wielding teens were released to their parents because no crime was committed, Reagan said. But when police investigated the three U-Hi students in the truck, they found several bottles of liquor and cited them for being minors in possession.