No Gun Charges Filed in Suicide of Boy, 10 : Tragedy: Prosecutors say even though the father’s pistol was accessible to the youth, it was unloaded. State’s child protection law covers only loaded weapons.

No criminal charges will be filed against the father of a 10-year-old boy who sneaked the man’s gun out of their house and fatally shot himself in the head at the entrance of the 49th Street School in South-Central Los Angeles, authorities said Monday.

Prosecutors declined to charge Jorge Licea Aguilar with leaving his .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol accessible to his son because the weapon was not loaded when the child took it from under a mattress, said Deputy Dist. Atty. David R. Traum.

An attorney for the Licea family applauded the decision. “That’s good news. It shows that they took a sober look at this case,” Pete Navarro said.

The state Children’s Firearm Protection Act, which holds adults responsible when they carelessly store guns around children, covers weapons that are loaded, Traum said. In this case, the bullets were stored separately on the top shelf of a bedroom dresser where the boy found them.

“That is not considered loaded because the magazine was not attached to the firearm,” Traum said.

Under the law, an adult can face three years in prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted.

Jorge shot himself Wednesday morning as other students were filing past him at the front door of the school, police said. He died Friday after lingering in a coma for two days. The death is considered a suicide.

The fifth-grader had been disciplined the day before the shooting, reportedly for using profane language in class. Jorge’s parents said their son recently brought home several notes suggesting that he was having problems in class and that each time, they signed them and came to school as requested.

The morning Jorge shot himself, police believe, he stashed the gun in his backpack and his father drove him to school.