Broward educators thought they smelled pot in a student’s bag. They found a gun, cops say
.jpg "Broward Sheriff’s Office’s Threat Management Unit arrested a 16-year-old student who brought a loaded handgun in his backpack on campus to Northeast High School in Oakland Park on Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2022.")
A 16-year-old student was arrested by Broward sheriff’s detectives after they say he brought a loaded gun to Northeast High School in Oakland Park.
According to Detective Bennie Langford and Sgt. Thomas Thyroff with the department’s Threat Management Unit, the student was called to the school’s administration office in reference to his grades at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday.
School officials became suspicious when they “detected a strong odor of what they believed to be marijuana” so the teen’s backpack was searched.
Inside, school officials said they found a firearm with ammunition. BSO Threat Management Unit detectives were called and arrested the student.
According to BSO spokeswoman Claudinne Caro, the student told officials “he had no intentions of using the firearm on school grounds and that it was for protection on his walk home from school.”
The student was taken to Broward’s Juvenile Assessment Center and faces a felony charge of possessing a firearm on school property. BSO did not say if there was marijuana in the backpack.
This is not the first time a student brought a gun onto Northeast High grounds in recent months, according to BSO’s Threat Management Unit.
On Nov. 12, officers said another 16-year-old student was caught with a loaded handgun in his backpack and arrested on several firearm possession charges after security guards saw the teen jumping the fence with another student to get onto the campus.
