Riverhead high school locked down after student brought bullets — but no weapon — to school

A Riverhead high school student was taken into police custody Friday after bringing more than a dozen .22 caliber bullets into the school and prompting a security alert that sent the school into lockdown, according to police officials.

At no point were students or faculty in danger, school superintendent Dr. Augustine Tornatore said in a Friday afternoon letter to parents.

The incident began early Friday afternoon, when an unidentified student found a bullet in a school hallway and brought it to the attention of school administrators. When a second student, 14, turned in a matching bullet that he said was “given” to him by another 14-year old student, administrators contacted a Riverhead police officer on campus.

The student who brought the bullets to school told authorities that he found them on a shelf at his brother’s business, police said in a press release. Upon further investigation, police determined that a family member legally owns a .22 caliber rifle, which was properly secured and never in the possession of the teenager.

Parent Monique Parsons said she first learned something was amiss at the school when she received repeated text messages from her daughter telling her how much she loved her and informing her mother that she was “very, very scared.”

Ms. Parsons said her daughter had been on the way to a school bathroom when a security guard sent her back to her classroom.

“You can’t be here, this is not a safe situation,” Ms. Parsons quoted the guard as telling her ninth grade daughter. “You have to go back to your classroom and tell your teacher to lock the door.” She said that her daughter’s teacher “had no idea what was going on.

“She had the students go and huddle in a corner together, out of view of the classroom door.”

Ms. Parsons said she received the first text from her daughter at 1:25 p.m., and received a recorded message from the school alerting parents to the incident at 2:44 p.m.

She said she immediately drove to the school after receiving her daughter’s text, where she met other parents gathered outside the front door who were equally upset and insisting they be let in to retrieve their children.

Ms. Parsons said she observed students exiting the side of the building without a security guard present while the lockdown was still in place, and asserted that it appeared that “anyone” could have entered the school at that point.

She said that as several parents stood outside the school’s front door, one parent slipped by a security guard, got into the school, and exited with her child a few minutes later.

After that, she said, parents were allowed into the building after having their IDs scanned by security.  

Ms. Parsons said her daughter told her that the high school has not conducted a lockdown drill during this school year, an assertion that she said she finds disturbing.

“As of tomorrow, we’re in April,” she said. “We’ve been in school since September. Knowing what the climate [in schools] is nationally, it’s ridiculous that they haven’t held a drill all year.”

In an April 3 statement, Riverhead officials said the “district is in compliance with the required drills up to this point in the school year. At Riverhead High School, lockdown drills are completed each quarter, fulfilling the high school lockdown drill requirement of four each school year.”