Portsmouth school says it learned late about gun incident

PORTSMOUTH

Wilson High School’s principal did not learn that police found a suspended student with a gun less than two blocks from the school until five hours after the incident Monday morning, school officials said Tuesday.

Police, however, said they increased their presence that morning in the school, on campus and in the neighborhood after the student’s father reported a handgun and ammunition missing from his home.

The 16-year-old, whose name is being withheld because he is a juvenile, was found at 11:42 a.m. on Jewell Avenue.

Principal Timothy Johnson “was not made aware that the boy had been apprehended until 5 o’clock and by then the students had been released for the day,” school spokeswoman Maureen Mizelle said.

“If there was an increased police presence, it was outside … and Mr. Johnson was not made aware of it.”

Parents were being notified of the incident Tuesday with automated phone calls, Mizelle said.

The 16-year-old was suspended from Wilson about 8:30 a.m. Monday, according to police. He then made threatening remarks to school personnel, according to a summary of allegations presented at his arraignment in Juvenile and Domestics Relations District Court on Tuesday.

Police said the officer and school administration contacted the student’s father, who went home and found that his gun vault had been broken into.

Officers began a search and found the student at 11:42 a.m. in a pickup registered to his father with a loaded handgun near him, police said.

Two other students were with him, and they were released to their parents, according to police.

During the arraignment Tuesday, the summary indicated that the cause of the 16-year-old’s three-day suspension was defiant behavior. A juvenile court officer recommended that he remain in custody “due to public safety.”

He is being held in the juvenile detention center in Chesapeake pending an Oct. 3 trial. He faces charges of larceny of a firearm, underage possession of a firearm, possession of a concealed weapon and possession of burglarious tools.

Reached Tuesday afternoon on the phone, Wilson parent Mark DiGennaro said he had not yet heard about the incident from the school division.

“I think the parents should have been notified,” said DiGennaro, who recalled an April 2010 shooting incident at Wilson during which a suspended student was let in through a locked door and fired shots in the school. No one was injured.

Mizelle said Tuesday that officials want parents to know the incident “took place in the community and not in the school itself.”

An email from the School Board clerk to board members Tuesday morning stated: “This entire event took place off school grounds and the police never indicated there was any need for heightened security at the school.”

No extra security measures were enforced at the school Tuesday, Mizelle said. Students were randomly checked by metal detectors and asked to empty backpacks – the normal routine, she said.

Pilot writer Janie Bryant contributed to this report.

Cheryl Ross, (757) 446-2443, cheryl.ross@pilotonline.com