Police Again Disarm Deaf Boy After He Breaks Into Pawn Shop

For the second time in two months, Long Beach police disarmed an emotionally disturbed deaf boy who broke into a pawn shop Wednesday, picked up a gun and began pointing it at passers-by, police said.

The 9-year-old, who was not identified, held police at bay for nearly an hour last month after breaking into the same pawn shop and seizing a semiautomatic rifle.

In Wednesday’s incident, the youngster threw his bicycle through a window of the A & V Pawn Shop in the 3300 block of East South Street and crawled in, police said.

“He armed himself with a gun again,” said Long Beach Police Lt. Dan Stowe. “Eleven minutes later, one of our officers was able to sneak into the store, sneak up behind him and disarm him.”

The boy suffered a leg scrape crawling through the broken window, but neither he nor the officer was otherwise injured, Stowe said.

“He’s a very troubled young man,” Stowe said of the boy. “What do you do with a 9-year-old boy like this? Tonight he was quite violent.”

The gun the youngster was holding in Wednesday’s break-in was not loaded, Stowe said, “and we didn’t think it was. The second time around, we learn.”

The semiautomatic rifle he seized in the earlier break-in was also not loaded. In that incident, the boy entered the shop by throwing a skateboard through a window.

Stowe said the boy was taken to the juvenile facility, but would be released to his mother.