March 1, 2022- 6:10 p.m.
A loaded handgun was found inside an 11-year-old’s lunchbox after students alerted their band teacher, officials said.
Now, the sixth-grader will be suspended from Parkton Elementary School for a year, according to the Public Schools of Robeson County. The district also said the girl’s parents could be charged after the incident on Monday, Feb. 28.
Just after noon, officials said a band teacher heard about a possible weapon and told a school resource officer. The girl was isolated, and the gun was found during a search of her belongings, district spokesperson Gordon Burnette told McClatchy News in a phone interview.
No one was injured during the incident at Parkton Elementary, a K-8 campus located in a rural area roughly 80 miles southwest of Raleigh.
It’s not the first time a gun has been reported on a Robeson County campus.
In December, a second-grader was accused of bringing a gun to an elementary school and showing it to another child at recess. Two months earlier, officials said a loaded gun was found in a kindergartner’s backpack.
Several other firearms have been located in or near high schools, McClatchy News reported. Random searches have started at the high school level, and that strategy could expand to other campuses.
“More enhanced safety measures will be something that our district looks into for the future,” Burnette said. “But right now in particular with this incident, we just want to say ‘thank you’ to those students who did stand up and speak out and might have saved some lives within that school.”
