U.S. high school student arrested for possession of gun amid series of school shooting threats

Source: Xinhua| 2019-01-08 18:33:17|Editor: Shi Yinglun
Video PlayerClose

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) -- A high school student in the U.S. state of Alaska was arrested Monday for carrying a firearm and marijuana on school campus, an Alaska-based TV channel reported.

The student was arrested at Benny Benson Secondary School, a vocational high school in Anchorage, the largest city in the U.S. state of Alaska.

According to the KTVA TV news outlet, the boy was found in possession of a gun when a school resource officer (SRO) was alerted about him bringing marijuana into the school.

KTVA quoted the Anchorage Police Department (APD) as saying that the SRO "immediately took the gun from the student."

U.S. laws bar any student from possessing drugs on school campus.

The student's identity and other details about the student's school information such as grade were not disclosed. He was detained in the McLaughlin Youth Center, a juvenile detention center in Anchorage.

The student's arrest came amid a series of school shooting threats in the Anchorage School District in the past year.

In November 2018, a student was arrested in connection with a threat written on the wall of a middle school girl's bathroom, which claimed that a shooting would take place during second period classes. The student faced charges of terroristic threatening and criminal mischief.

A few days before the written threat incident, graffiti messages were discovered in two bathrooms at Robert Service School in Anchorage which contained "a hateful slur" and language that promoted gun violence, including a threat of "shooting up the school."

Early last year, a junior student at an Anchorage high school wrote to the Anchorage Daily News complaining that she and her classmates "prepare more for a school shooting than we do for an earthquake."

"It's scary to talk about mass shootings with my peers, but it's even scarier that it's something that could happen to us," she said.

TOP STORIES
EDITOR’S CHOICE
MOST VIEWED
EXPLORE XINHUANET
010020070750000000000000011100001377288421