Menifee’s Ethan Chase Middle School on edge after student brings gun to school, another student receives threat

MENIFEE, Calif. (KABC) — A Menifee center college is on edge after a 12-year-old student introduced a gun with him to campus.

The gun became out to be unloaded, however folks, scholars and faculty workers stay involved after the incident.

“I’m really shaken now because my neighbor sent me an email about the student arrested with a gun and I’m so nervous to go in there right now,” mentioned Pamela Frazier, an worker at Ethan Chase Middle School.

Police got here to the varsity on Wednesday and arrested the 12-year-old for criminal ownership of a firearm on college grounds after he was once discovered to have an unloaded gun in his backpack.

Menifee police say they do not imagine the boy was once attempting to threaten somebody with the gun, however simply to display it off.

“There is nothing that leads us to believe that there was a credible threat to the school,” mentioned Captain Heriberto Gutierrez of the Menifee Police Department. “It’s still under investigation, but we don’t have any suspicions there was criminal intent behind it.”

Adding to the confusion, police didn’t straight away tell folks of the incident. Richard Sandoval mentioned he discovered of the gun and arrest from his 7th grader.

“It is a little bit surprising, I’d like to think they were trying to get the information together, the facts present it to the parents, but some things you want to know right away,” mentioned Sandoval.

The college district did sooner or later let folks know of the arrest in a vaguely worded message that still knowledgeable folks of a threat on social media made to a student that was once reported on Monday.

Someone despatched the message “Can they dodge a bullet?” to a student on a social media app. Police say the threat was once now not credible and is unrelated to the gun incident.

Eyewitness News reached out to the Romoland Unified School District for remark, however they referred us to the police division, who supplied this message to folks and scholars:

“It is important that if you see something on school grounds to say something as a student it is important to report suspicious activity to adults to administrators and in this case the right thing was done.”