Metro

Mom busted after son brings pistol in backpack to Queens school — dad says son was ‘bullied’

Tyler's father, Walter Orozco, today in his home.

Tyler’s father, Walter Orozco, today in his home. (Benny J. Stumbo)

The home of Deborah Farley and Walter Orozco.

The home of Deborah Farley and Walter Orozco. (Benny J. Stumbo)

The mother of a Queens second-grader who showed up to school with a semiautomatic handgun has been arrested, police said this morning.

Deborah Farley, 53, was charged late last night with two counts of criminal possession of a weapon and one count each of endangering the welfare of a child and unlawful possession of a weapon after the gun — a flare pistol — a magazine with 10 bullets and at least seven more rounds in a plastic bag were found in her son Tyler’s “Batman” backpack, police said.

Police also found seven baggies of pot in the apartment.

Farley is in police custody and is set to be arraigned later today.

The mom told cops that she had been walking on a Queens street the night before while carrying the weapons in her son’s backpack, law-enforcement sources said. It was unclear why she had the guns. She told cops that she forgot to then take the guns out of the bag before Tyler went to school.

Farley dropped her son off at Wave Preparatory School in Far Rockaway at 7:30 a.m. — and when the mom returned home, someone in the house told her the child may have gone to school with a gun stashed in his backpack, law-enforcement sources said yesterday.

Farley told cops that when she realized what had happened, she went to her son’s school and signed him out on the pretext that he had a dental appointment.

Detectives believed she had hoped to snatch the guns out of his bag before anyone found out.

She searched the backpack and asked the boy whether he had seen the gun, sources added.

Tyler said he gave the gun to another boy, and then he went with his mother at 10:10 a.m. to tell the principal what had happened, sources said.

The school, which has held safety drills since the Newtown massacre, went into lockdown.

The flare gun was found in Tyler’s friend’s backpack.

“I was crying. I was scared. I was hiding under the table for so long I couldn’t feel my legs,” said student Eneisha Perez, 9.

The gun was confiscated by school safety agents.

But Tyler’s father today denied the guns were even the parents’.

“I don’t know how that gun got into my son’s bookbag,” said Walter Orozco, Tyler’s father. “We don’t own any guns.”

Orozco said the gun may belong to one of his older sons, who is “in a gang.”

Both of the boy’s brothers, who are in their 20s, are known to the police, and one had been a shooting victim, sources said.

There were no licensed gun owners at the home, police said.

“Maybe Tyler found it and hid it,” the dad said.

Orozco defended his wife, saying “she’s a good mom.”

Both Tyler and his 10-year-old sister have been placed in ACS custody.

Upon dismissal, parents were handed a sheet of paper informing them about the school being locked down, but there was no information given to them about the gun incident.

Additional reporting by Kirstan Conley