HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. (Queen City News) — Huntersville Police say a juvenile student has been arrested for bringing a loaded and stolen gun inside North Mecklenburg High School.
Police announce safe detention order Published for the student.
Officials say what happened at North Meck is part of a larger problem they are working to address. Charlotte-Mecklenburg school leaders do not believe the student with the gun went through the body scanner.
“I'm a teacher and I've been in those schools. I know what it's like for something like that to happen,” said Melissa Easley, a CMS board member who represents the northern part of the county. Told. “It's really heartbreaking because we don't know what's going to happen.”
CMS leaders do not believe the student passed through an entrance equipped with a body scanner that would likely identify a firearm.
The problem at North Meck is that the 72-year-old campus has multiple entrances and buildings, and not all doors have body scanners.
“It's always a heartbreaking situation. We want our children to be safe,” Easley said.
School leaders said Tuesday they were still working to determine when and where the student entered with a weapon, but they know the construction of a new building on the existing campus will increase security. There is. Voters passed a $2.5 billion bond in November.
“With the funding through our bond, the new building in North Meck will have one entrance, or one or two, versus five, 10 or 15 entrances. , it's much easier to monitor and control and be able to see who's coming and going,' which some of these open campus schools have,'' Easley said.
North Meck is one of several schools with this type of layout, which leaders say will change as the new school is built.
“They were all built back then over many decades and had a university feel to them and that was the intention at the time, but we know life has changed since then. ” Easley said.
CMS has reduced the number of guns on campus by about 80 percent since the 2021-22 school year, when there were more guns on campus than any other school district in North Carolina.
The district attributes the decline to the introduction of body scanners and the See Something, Say Something app, an anonymous reporting system.
