Atlanta police said three juveniles were charged in connection to reports of a gun on campus at Frederick Douglass High School in northwest Atlanta on Wednesday.
The school was locked down for several hours after the first report that a student had a gun at the school. The lockdown was lifted around 3 p.m.
School resource officers were advised that a student had a gun on campus around 11:30 a.m., police said. Three students were located and detained, but they no longer had the gun, Officer John Chafee with Atlanta police said. Officers later found the gun on school grounds and determined that all three students had been in possession of it, he said.
The three students were charged with possession of a firearm on school property, possession of a firearm under 18 years old, and disrupting public schools, police said. They were taken to the Fulton County Youth Detention Center.
At one point during the lockdown, the school was surrounded with police cars and a police helicopter was hovering.
Parents and guardians were notified of the lockdown via robo-call and email, Atlanta Public Schools spokesman James C. Malone said.
After receiving the call, parent Tracy Flowers said she went to the school, which is on Hamilton E. Holmes Drive NW. Her daughter is a sophomore at Douglass.
"I received a phone call from her indicating that it was something going on inside the school," Flowers said. "She told me that she was OK and I told her that I'm OK. I'm out here. I told her I love her and that everything will be OK because they got everything under control outside."
No injuries were reported.
Copyright 2014 - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
