MILLINOCKET, Maine — A Stearns Junior/Senior High School student surrendered a jackknife and was issued summonses for his involvement in a dispute that caused a brief lockdown at the school last week, officials said Tuesday.
Police issued the student, 14, summonses for disorderly conduct and criminal trespass on Friday and referred him to juvenile authorities after the incident. No other students were charged, police said.
The incident began, police and school officials said, about 11:50 a.m. Friday. The student and his mother came to a meeting at a school conference room near the school’s front door to collect homework assignments when he began receiving text messages from another student within the school, officials said.
The messages enraged the student, who was summoned for disorderly conduct for swearing at people in the room and refusing to follow orders to stay in the room, police said. He was cited for criminal trespass for leaving the conference room and looking for the student sending him the texts, police said.
Superintendent Frank Boynton, who was in the room, said school officials immediately called 911 and put the school in lockdown until police took the 14-year-old into custody about five minutes later, officials said.
Boynton, who did not immediately return messages left Tuesday, said Friday that the lockdown was a precaution. The 14-year-old never got anywhere near the other student and at some point voluntarily gave school officials the jackknife, officials said.
It is unclear why the 14-year-old was not attending the school on a regular basis or whether he has been suspended for Friday’s incident. The other student involved might also have violated school rules that allow for cellphone use “before 7:45 a.m. or after 2 p.m.” except “in the cafeteria during lunch breaks,” according to the Stearns student handbook.
The handbook calls for a minimum penalty of suspension for students who bring onto school grounds “firearms, firearm replicas, knives, other weapons, or other objects which can be construed as weapons. … This includes any object specifically intended to do bodily harm.”
Boynton said he expected to bring the matter before the Millinocket School Committee at one of its next meetings. Under school regulations, the school board determines whether students are expelled. The board meets next at 2 p.m. Tuesday, April 5.
The student is due in Millinocket District Court on May 4, police said.