A 17-year-old student charged with robbery at a Lakeville school was reported to be armed with a handgun, though a weapon was not found.
A school resource officer responded to a weapon report on Tuesday at Lakeville Pathways Academy, an alternative high school that’s in the same building as Kenwood Trail Middle School.
The schools have separate entrances, Pathways has its own wing, and there isn’t contact between middle school and Pathways students at school, according to a school district spokesperson.
On Tuesday, a Pathways student used a THC vape in the bathroom (THC is a component of marijuana). The 17-year-old asked to use it and the other student handed it to him. The 17-year-old then “pulled out a gun, pointed the gun at his stomach and said, ‘I’m stealing this from you,’” said a juvenile petition, of what police were told, that was filed in court Thursday.
The 17-year-old exited the bathroom. When a teacher was notified, a staff member got the 17-year-old from class to take him to her office. Before they reached it, the teen ran out a door and through a parking lot.
“Because the student had left the building, and it was unconfirmed if they had a firearm, Lakeville Pathways Academy and Kenwood Trail Middle School immediately went into a secure protocol,” when no one is allowed in or out of the building, Superintendent Michael Baumann wrote to families Wednesday.
“Based on security camera footage and a search that immediately began by our School Resource Officers and the Lakeville Police Department, it became clear that the student had immediately left school grounds,” he continued. “Out of an abundance of caution, our two high schools, Lakeville North and Lakeville South, as well as their closest elementary schools, Lake Marion and Lakeview, were also placed in secure protocols.”
Officers took the 17-year-old into custody just over an hour after he ran from the school. The Lakeville resident was found by basketball courts in a mobile home community in Burnsville. He said he didn’t know anyone who lived in the community, according to the petition.
Police found no gun or vape with the 17-year-old. Before his interview with officers, the teen and his mother “were heard whispering about sticking to a story that (the teen) first told her,” the petition said. “When asked if he had a gun,” he said he did not and that he ran from the school because he had a vape.
Surveillance footage from the school showed the 17-year-old entered the bathroom, and it appeared he was “holding his left arm in front of his body near the left front sweatshirt pocket,” the petition said. When he returned to class, he was seen retrieving his iPad and phone “using only his right hand and his left hand is guarding his left side of his body.”
Baumann wrote that he recognized the “incident is concerning, and may raise worries about your students’ safety while at school.” He credited people for keeping the school safe — when “students saw something concerning, they reported it right away,” plus school leaders, staff and students used their school safety training, he wrote.
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