Lakewood to add metal detectors after 2 elementary students bring gun to school

Show Caption Hide Caption Young boys load gun on Lakewood school bus Video and information from Lakewood PD.

LAKEWOOD - Public school leaders say metal detectors will be installed in all schools after an elementary student brought a loaded handgun to his school Tuesday.

"Better safe than sorry. We will have metal detectors in all of our elementary schools in seven to 10 days," board attorney Michael Inzelbuch said Wednesday.

District security chief John Stillwell is seeking price quotes from three companies to install the security devices, Inzelbuch said. The district's middle and high school already have metal detectors.

The district will also require all students to use only transparent backpacks when they return to school in September or for extended study beginning in July, Inzelbuch said.

"While we have no reason to believe it will happen again, we are being proactive here," he said.

Inzelbuch and other school and police officials discuss security in the video below. You can see surveillance video from the bus at the top of this article and further down below.

Lakewood students with gun will 'absolutely not' return to class School officials and township police discuss safety and security after an incident involving elementary school students and a loaded gun. Video courtesy Lakewood Public School District.

He spoke to the Asbury Park Press after a Wednesday morning meeting in which he, Stillwell and Superintendent Laura A. Winters met with all district principals and police to review emergency response procedures and weapons policies.

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Two elementary students were charged with weapons offenses Tuesday after one 9-year-old boy brought a loaded gun onto a school bus and then to Oak Street Elementary School.

The fourth grader initially brought a loaded .22-caliber handgun onto his school bus and transferred it to the backpack of a 10-year-old fifth grade student during the ride, Detective Lt. Gregory Staffordsmith said Tuesday. The bus was not a district bus, but belonged to Seman-Tov, one of Lakewood's many contracted routes.

Another student told school security that the 9-year-old had a loaded gun.

Disciplinary proceedings following the Lakewood Board of Education's policies are underway.

Raw Video: Gun on a Lakewood School Bus Two boys are facing charges after allegedly loading a gun on a school bus and bringing it to Oak Street Elementary School.

"The board will meet with (the students') parents and there will be a disciplinary hearing," Winters said, speaking during a live-streamed show Tuesday evening, and noting that the students would not return to school Wednesday.

Lakewood has six elementary schools and about 6,000 students districtwide. Oak Street Elementary School, where the incident occurred, has more than 900 students, more than 800 of whom are Hispanic, according to state education data.

Inzelbuch said parents received automated calls alerting them of the Tuesday incident in English and Spanish, and district staff did and excellent job responding to the emergency.

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Some parents, he said, may not have gotten the call because their phone numbers had changed. The district is asking parents to update their phone numbers by calling their school or going online to the district's website.

While police continue to investigate the incident, parents should ensure measures are in place to keep weapons out of the hands of children, Lakewood Police Detective Sgt. Leroy Marshall said.

"If you do have a weapon at home, we just ask that you secure the weapon in some kind of safe or some sort of lockbox where it's not accessible to any children," he said.

Marshall said there was no lockdown at the elementary school amid the incident because police and security were able to secure the weapon before that was necessary.

Contrary to other published reports, township police said there was nothing to indicate that the boys had brought the gun to school on a regular basis.

"There is the possibility that they brought the gun on Monday as well as yesterday," Staffordsmith told the Asbury Park Press in a phone interview Wednesday. There was "nothing to indicate that they had this gun for an extended period of time," he said.

The origin of the gun was still a mystery Wednesday.

Police had not yet found information on a possible owner for the gun, and it did not come up as lost or stolen, Staffordsmith said. Neither boy would tell police where it came from.

Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph Coronato has instructed staff in the juvenile unit of his office “to take a hard look" at the incident involving the children who had a loaded gun on a school bus in Lakewood, said his spokesman, Al Della Fave.

“Late last night, he mobilized his people to get involved and report all the circumstances of what took place," Della Fave said.

That includes “looking at how the juveniles came to be in possession of the weapon," Della Fave said.

“There are multiple investigations that are going to be conducted as a result of this," Coronato said. “This is something that we take seriously, something that needs to be worked through, and you can be sure that we’re going to do that. This has spawned multiple investigations, and we’re going to rout them all out."

Coronato said the juveniles involved will be prosecuted by his office in the juvenile part of Family Court.

“Because it’s a juvenile case, I can’t discuss much," he said.

Coronato said he plans to discuss the matter with the county’s schools superintendents, which he meets with on a monthly basis.



“This is a conversation that I’m going to have with all the superintendents in all the schools in Ocean County,’’ Coronato said.

He declined to go into detail when asked if he had any recommendations or mandates for the school superintendents.

Stacey Barchenger: @sbarchenger; 732-643-4245; sbarchenger@gannettnj.com