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Rifle round is found in hallway of high school

By Stephen T. Watson NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: 04/23/08 6:53 AM

A state police sniffer dog was taken into Grand Island High School, and students were briefly kept in their classrooms Tuesday afternoon after a student reported finding a bullet in a school hallway, according to district officials and the state police.

No weapon or other ammunition was found during a subsequent search, and school was dismissed at the normal time, Superintendent Robert Christmann said.

“This is, we think, a kid . . . trying to cause some excitement,” the superintendent said.

At about 10:45 a. m., a 16-year-old male student told Assistant Principal Andres Arroyo that he had found a .270-caliber rifle round on the floor of a hallway in the high school, according to state troopers.

The bullet was found near the classrooms of the foreign language teachers.

Trooper Christopher Pyc, the school resource officer, investigated the incident with help from troopers from the state police Lockport substation.

The high school has surveillance cameras around the building, but the cameras didn’t capture the exact area where the bullet was left.

Activities and classes at the school went on as usual, but later in the day, school officials as a precaution brought in a sniffer dog, Christmann said.

The school was never placed in “lockdown” mode, the superintendent said, but students and faculty were kept in their classrooms from about 1:30 to 1:50 p. m. while the dog searched the halls.

Troopers and school officials interviewed a number of students, and the investigation continues.

“What typically happens is, give it a couple days, we’ll hear [through the student grapevine], ‘Tom Smith [a fictitious name] brought it in,’ ” Christmann said.

Whoever placed the bullet in the school faces disciplinary action, he added.