Another Yarmouth County school deals with a report of a weapon

By Tina Comeau

THE VANGUARD

NovaNewsNow.com

Another school in Yarmouth County prevented students from leaving their classroom during the school day amid reports of a weapon.

The Tri-County Regional School Board says a student at Drumlin Heights Consolidated School allegedly had a knife at the school and was reportedly making threats towards other students.

A complaint was made Thursday, Oct. 2 to the school administration, who at the same time were dealing with a very emotional distraught student in an unrelated incidents.

As a precaution, teachers were told not to let students leave their classrooms at the P-12 school. Superintendent Phil Landry said it wasn’t an official lockdown like the one that had occurred one day earlier at Yarmouth Consolidated Memorial High School because in this case the entire school was not locked down.

“It was just a precautionary measure,” he said.

When Landry spoke to the Vanguard/NovaNewsNow.com shortly after 4 p.m. on Oct. 2, no knife had been found at the school. Landry said the administration had been told a knife had been hidden on a bus, but a search of the bus turned up nothing. Then it was reported that the knife was hidden in the school. He said staff was searching for it.

One day earlier the Yarmouth high school and Central elementary school were locked down when the RCMP was called to Yarmouth Junior High over a report that a student inside the school had what was possibly a handgun. It turned out to be a plastic pellet gun.

Asked if he is concerned over the proximity of the events involving Tri-County schools, Landry said the fact is these aren’t necessarily isolated incidents. Despite board policy that prohibits it, Landry says students do bring weapons to school. And not just in Yarmouth County, but across the province.

So while he said he wasn’t concerned over the incidents happening so close to each other, he said the board is always concerned about the safety of its students and staff.

The student's parent was called to the school to help address the situation. The student was taken home.

He has since been removed from the school and will no longer be attending classes there.

Landry said the RCMP were not immediately contacted by the school, due to the fact that administration was dealing with the other unrelated high-needs incident involving a student. But he said he did direct the principal to involve the RCMP because of the allegation of a weapon having been at the school. There have been mixed reports as to when in fact the knife incident actually occurred.

But Landry said he views the RCMP involvement as a necessity in any situation involving a weapon, or even the allegation of one.

“If I am aware of a weapon being in a school, the RCMP has to be contacted,” he said. “They have to.”