Kristina Rowe said it all started when several teenagers started bullying her daughter. She said the gun had nothing to do with any of it.
Rowe says a posse of girls has been harassing her daughter since the beginning of the school year. She says just last week they showed up to her house at midnight.
Rowe also happens to be a registered gun owner. So Tuesday when her daughter came home with a black eye, her first instinct was to grab her gun.
"This has been going on for three or four months," said Rowe.
Rowe says the whole incident reached a boiling point Tuesday when her 13-year-old, Mykira McFarland, walked in with a bruised eye.
"I asked her what was wrong and I saw her eye was a little bit discolored and she said the girl jumped on her," said Rowe.
"She was like, 'I'm fixing to fight you.' I said 'No, you're not' and then I tried to walk off and then she grabbed me and then that's when she just started hitting me," said McFarland.
Rowe says she grabbed her pistol because she feared there could be more than one attacker, and bolted to the bus stop outside her apartment complex where the alleged bully had already began boarding the bus.
"I stopped the bus and I said, 'Where is...' and I said her name.'Is she up here?' He said no. I came to pick her up. So I said 'She just attacked my daughter and I want to get her address.'"
When the bus driver wouldn't tell her the alleged bully's address, Rowe jumped in her car to go to the girl's school, and dialed 911.
She told a dispatcher: "I done have an altercation with the kids because I'm sick of them messing with my daughter."
When Rowe got to River Oaks Middle School she says she went inside without her gun to talk with the principal. When police wanted to know where Rowe left the firearm, she took them to her car.
"He saw the gun was under the chair," she said. "So he got the gun and he said 'Ma'am place your behind your back.' And I said 'For what?' He said 'You're under arrest.'"
The Duke Hospital nurse's assistant is now charged with carrying a firearm onto school property.
Rowe said an unintended consequence for trying to protect her child from teenage tormentors has made now made going to a new school a bad experience for her daughter.
"Sometimes I feel like scared or sometimes I'll have my other friends by me," said McFarland. "I'll feel safe."
Mykira's mom says she's a straight A student.
Rowe posted bond and was released from jail Tuesday. Her next court date is next month.
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