Tri-parish schools face six gun-related incidents

Schools in the Tri-parish area have been riddled recently with six gun-related incidents in less than a month.

Although no shootings occurred, guns were brought to school in four of these incidents, and gun threats were made in the other two.

The first of which was Feb. 25 when a male fourth-grader at South Thibodaux Elementary brought a pellet gun to school. According to police, school administrators received a tip and found the gun in his school bag. There has been no word on whether the student planned on using the weapon.

The following week on March 3, the same school was placed under lockdown when rumors circulated that a fifth-grader was carrying a gun. No weapon was found, but Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre said the student was placed in his parent’s custody and is facing a terrorizing charge.

Earlier that week on March 1, Terrebonne High student Dominique Talley allegedly brought a BB gun to school. Police say the school resource officer heard he showed the gun to another student. Talley is charged with carrying a firearm or dangerous weapon on school property.

A 15-year-old student made threats to bring a gun to school and cause a lockdown situation at South Lafourche High School March 9. According to police, the student admitted he made the comments, but he said he only made them for attention and had no plans of carrying out his threats. He too is charged with terrorizing.

A 12-year-old boy brought a toy gun called an air soft gun to Broadmoor Elementary’s after school program March 11. Authorities say he approached a 9-year-old girl, called her a profane name and showed her the gun’s grip.

Finally, a 13-year-old student at B.E. Boudreaux Middle School was arrested last Wednesday after disclosing he had a handgun in his locker. The gun was found unloaded and without a clip. The school immediately invoked the Crisis Response Plan, which every school in St. Mary Parish carries out when a gun-related incident occurs.

Although six incidents is a high number for a one-month span, Houma Police Sgt. Dana Coleman said there is always cause for concern in today’s changing society.

“It all boils down to parents being more involved with their kids before they leave home,” said Coleman. “The parents know their kids better than administrators at the school. You know what kind of toys your kids play with.”

Lafourche Parish sheriff’s spokeswoman Lesley Hill Peters said people are reporting threats more often than they used to, in regard to the two gun threats. She feels that could explain why the amount of reported threats has increased recently.

“What we would attribute the recent activity to, is that students and parents are getting it – that they need to take these types of comments seriously,” said Peters. “We continue to encourage parents and students to take any comments they hear seriously and report them. Don’t just say ‘Oh he’s joking’ or ‘You can’t believe that guy,’ because you just never know.”

Peters added the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office provides schools that receive gun threats with extra security until the potential danger is deemed to be over.

But the parish’s school systems must add measures of prevention as well.

Therefore, Lafourche Parish School Board Communications Specialist Floid Benoit said the schools will increase use of their metal detectors.

Benoit said every Lafourche Parish school has handheld metal detectors, and every middle school and high school has walkthrough metal detectors.

“It’s random [when metal detectors are used],” said Benoit. “They’re used whenever we get a tip, or sometimes we do it just to do it if we hadn’t done it in a while.”

Benoit added that the walkthrough metal detectors are portable, so the school system could have brought some to South Thibodaux Elementary if they were needed for that situation.

According to Benoit, the school board has increased its warnings to teachers and students as well.

“We’ve also had staff meetings to make sure and remind everyone – teachers, principles, and everybody – take any threat seriously, any tip and information you have,” said Benoit. “Which we all do normally under any circumstance, but just kind of heighten it and do it a little more. We’re reiterating it to students too. If you hear another student say something, as minor as it is, let us know.”

St. Mary Parish School Board Superintendent Donald Aguillard said the parish’s Crisis Response Plan worked well after last week’s incident.

“We practice routinely our crisis response drills, and we train our personnel to handle these matters to the best of our ability,” he said. “It seemed in this case, everything worked according to our plan. Students were safe at all times.”

Aguillard added every middle school and high school has at least two handheld metal detectors, and they are all required to do at least one or two random searches.

As for Terrebonne Parish, School District Superintendent Philip Martin said many schools in the parish have handheld medal detectors, but they do not use walkthrough metal detectors for students as they walk into school.

“We have 38 schools, and every school has multiple doors,” he said. “It creates another set of problems that I’m not sure is logistically possibly at this point in time.”

But Martin added parish schools have increased their security efforts.

“What we’re trying to do, through the school and through counseling, is tell [students] you can’t go around doing things like this because it scares people to death,” he explained. “We can educate kids – even the younger kids – to teach them to understand what things are appropriate and what things are very inappropriate. Children don’t fully appreciate the difference.”

Martin said the parish uses an “overabundance of caution” when a gun-related case does occur, and Terrebonne Parish has a written plan to deal with these instances.

“You can’t use too much caution when dealing with something like that,” said Martin. “Severity can’t be overestimated of the potential. We’re aware of it, and we do have security measures at every school.”