A suspended 16-year-old Chamblee Charter High School student was arrested Tuesday, armed with multiple handguns, across the street from the school, police said.
Authorities have not released the juvenile’s name, but said he admitted to breaking into a nearby house earlier in the day and stealing several weapons, Chamblee Police Chief R. Marc Johnson said.
Law enforcement officials believe the student wanted to sell the guns and wasn’t intending to harm students at the school. But the initial report of a person across the street from the school with weapons created a tense atmosphere on the campus.
About 2:20 p.m. a school resource officer radioed for backup after a student inside the school reported someone was across the street with a weapon. With school preparing to dismiss about 3:20 p.m., the situation made for “chaos, on top of chaos, on top of chaos,” said Doraville police spokesman Gene Callaway.
DeKalb County Schools Superintendent Michael Thurmond said the student who alerted the resource officer overhead a conversation and reported what he heard.
“We’re all so very proud of him doing the right thing at the right time and possibly averting a major tragedy,” Thurmond said. “Because this student came forward with this information, those illegal weapons are now confiscated and the person who was in possession of the weapons is in custody.”
The student cooperated with authorities and told them he’d stashed some of the stolen weapons at the school’s football stadium.
“I can only guess it was too much for him to carry,” Johnson said during a news conference, when asked why the weapons might have been on school property.”
Johnson said the male student, who was arrested within about 10 minutes, had been suspended from school, but was dropped off there earlier like it was a regular day.
“He has cooperated with authorities” the chief said. “He didn’t give us any kind of problem.”
The school was locked down for a period of time, but not because the area was unsafe, Johnson said.
“We just wanted to keep the students away from the stadium for a period of time,” he said.
A freshman at Chamblee High said after the lockdown was announced, the mood inside the school was tense.
“It was pretty scary because we didn’t know where the person was for a good amount of the time,” Jaelyn Willis said. “So she or he could have been in the building.”
Police from several agencies, including Chamblee, DeKalb and Georgia Tech, were on the campus during the incident.
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