A 17-year-old Racine girl was charged after she let her boyfriend drive her van and her friends pointed BB guns at people while inside her grandmother’s van, according to a criminal complaint by the Racine County District Attorney’s Office.
Dayleen Bergsrud was charged by the Racine County District Attorney’s Office on Wednesday, April 29 with disorderly conduct and disorderly conduct — party to a crime.
According to the criminal complaint, Racine Police were called at 5:19 p.m. Tuesday, April 28 after several kids were seen passing a handgun back and forth and pointing it at some kids in the area.
A witness told police she saw a black teenager leaning out of the passenger side window of the van pointing a gun at a group of Hispanic kids that were between the ages of 10 and 15-years old. The boy with the gun then pointed the gun at a black girl standing on the sidewalk.
Officers cleared Pershing Park Drive looking for the minivan and conducted a high risk traffic stop.
With guns drawn, they found the driver of the van on Grand Avenue and 17th Street, and removed the driver, which turned out to be Bergsrud’s grandmother, from the van. However, she was the only person in the van and police didn’t find any weapons inside.
Bergsrud’s grandmothe told police she had just exchanged vehicles with her granddaughter Dayleen. When police spoke to Bergsrud she told police she let her boyfriend, who didn’t have a driver’s license, drive the van and had several friends inside the van at the time.
Police learned during an investigation that the guns were actually bb guns.
The officer asked Bergsrud if she understood how dangerous it was to allow people to point BB guns out of the van and that it would be “justified for an officer to shoot individuals in such situations if it were not possible to determine whether or not the BB guns were real or fake.”
Bergsrud told the officer “she didn’t care and that she acknowledged having zero respect for life, herself included, due to her reported extreme depression.”
During the interview, Bergsrud started yelling at the officer and refused to go inside while her grandmother was speaking to the police.
Officers arrested Dayleen for the disorderly conduct charges and permitting an unauthorized person to drive. A $500 signature bond was set and she is expected to have a pre-trial conference at 3:15 p.m. May 22.
We’ve got a phone call into the Racine Police Department to find out if the other juveniles in the van were cited. But the friends told police they were pointing the BB gun at the seagulls.