A judge in Virginia called it “appalling” that a school decided to suspend a sixth-grader for not more quickly reporting that his classmate brought a bullet to class after the boy waited until his test was over.

Judge Vivian Henderson of Virginia Beach ruled in favor of Rachel Wigand, the suspended child’s mother, in her lawsuit against St. John the Apostle Catholic School. Wigand claimed that the private school violated its contract by suspending her son for a day and a half in September.

Her son, identified as A.W., was suspended the same amount of time as the student who brought the bullet to school.

In September, A.W. was in class preparing for a standardized test when another classmate showed him a bullet. He waited until after the test was over, went to his next class, then went to tell the principal about the bullet, Anderson told NBC News.

The school quickly called the police and officers recovered the bullet from the student’s backpack. Approximately two hours passed between A.W. being shown the bullet and his report to the principal, Anderson told the outlet.

Wigand’s representative argued that the school could’ve easily given him detention or another form of in-school action.

“A suspension on a child’s academic record is permanent. When you’re enrolling children in subsequent educational places, they ask you that question: Has your kid ever been suspended? What happened to her child was so absurd. It wasn’t fair that the mom was going to have to answer that question ‘Yes’ for the remainder of this child’s academic career,” Wigand’s attorney Tim Anderson said.

Henderson attested that A.W. was “the unfortunate victim in the matter” and found the entire situation “appalling, for lack of a better word, for this court.”

“Especially in an environment where … younger and younger kids are being forced to make adult-like decisions without clear boundaries or parameters,” Henderson said in a recording of Monday’s hearing provided to NBC News by Anderson.

Meanwhile, the school’s attorney cited its handbook and tuition contract to defend A.W.’s suspension, which states that it had the right to dole out “a more or less severe form of discipline.”

They added that the choice to send Wigand’s son home was ultimately to set a clear standard on school safety and “trying to impose a lesson of ‘Hey, this is why it’s important.'”

Since being suspended, A.W. has allegedly faced bullying in school and his frustrated mother hopes to enroll him and her other children at a new school in the future, she said.