SULLIVAN, Maine — Several bullets found outside a local school on Wednesday afternoon are what prompted a subsequent 90-minute search of the building, the school superintendent said Thursday.
Suzanne Lukas, superintendent of Regional School Unit 24, indicated Thursday in a press release that a pupil’s mother found the bullets along the front walkway of Mountain View School, which is located on Route 200. The school serves 240 pupils from kindergarten through eighth grade who live in Franklin, Sorrento and Sullivan.
The woman immediately told school officials what she had discovered and, after further searching, a total of nine .22-caliber bullets were found. School officials then called Maine State Police and held pupils in their classrooms from about 1 to 2:30 p.m. while the building was searched for “additional safety concerns,” Lukas indicated. No other items prohibited on school grounds were found during the search, she said.
On Wednesday, Lukas had declined to indicate what prompted the search or what police and school officials were looking for during the lockdown.
“At no time during the day was there evidence that any intruders were in the building or present on school grounds,” Lukas wrote Thursday. “There was no information indicating that a weapon was on site. Nonetheless, with bullets on school grounds we were compelled to search the premises for additional ammunition and the possibility of a weapon.”
School administrators also individually interviewed older students at the school on Wednesday to ask whether they had any information about anyone bringing bullets or other prohibited items to the school or knew of any hazardous activity at the school.
“No student was found to have bullets or other contraband,” Lukas wrote in the release.
According to Lukas, after Wednesday’s search ended, students were allowed to go home at the usual dismissal time of 2:45 p.m. and after-school programs proceeded as normal.
In the release, Lukas thanked Trooper Chris Smith and Sgt. Tim Varney of Maine State Police for providing support to school staff on Wednesday while the building was being searched and pupils were being interviewed.
…”an abundance of caution”?
I imagine the reporter knows nothing about guns, otherwise we might have better details. Are we referring to .22 LR? Or the more potent .223 Remington? A mere 3/100 of an inch difference in diameter, but worlds apart in stopping power.
And what exactly did she find? Bullets? Unlikely. Fire off some bullets, then try to go find them where they’ve landed. Good luck with that.
Live cartridges? Spent casings?
Oh you can be sure that if it were 223 they would be shouting from the rooftops about ”assault weapons”.
a total of nine .22-caliber bullets were found
Does this seem a litte ridiculous? I get that guns and gun related things are not allowed on school property but seriously. I’d like to now exactly what was found too.
They are “cartridges” not bullets. “Bullets” are one type of projectile, common to most cartridges. What they found were cartridges, or even possibly spent casings since I wouldn’t put miss-characterization of even that blatant a level past teachers or reporters. .22lr cartridges being found on the ground are exceedingly benign since they are the most common caliber in the world by far, and are easily dropped or lost without being noticed. It leaves one to wonder what the teachers / law enforcement / media reaction would have been if the cartridges had been, say, something vilified like 9mm hollow points, or worse; 7.62×39 (AK47).
If school administrators had not investigated and a student had a weapon at school, you posters who are going on about overreacting would be going on about not investigating. If all you have is second guessing you should probably keep it to yourself.