ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Charges have been dropped against a 10-year-old who showed a fake gun to another student on a school bus earlier this month.

According to The Washington Post, Alexandria Commonwealth’s Attorney S. Randolph Sengel said that the matter should be handled by the school district and that “we did not feel it was appropriate or productive to proceed with criminal prosecution.”

On the bus ride home on Feb. 4, the boy reportedly flashed the orange-tipped replica gun "without indicating it was fake," according to police. A girl on the bus told her mother what she had seen and that she was scared, and her mother called school officials.

The next day, the boy’s backpack was searched, the fake gun was found and he was arrested.

Three weeks later, after the charges against the boy were dropped, his mother told The Washington Post that “it’s not like we don’t understand that guns are bad. We do. … But you’re doing all of this for a toy? They overreacted — badly.”

Another recent story about a fake-gun incident on a school bus:

• Bus driver fired, charged over toy gun flap