10-year-old student arrested for having gun at Maine school
By PATRICK WHITTLE
MONROE, Maine (AP) — Police arrested a 10-year-old student in Maine after the student arrived on school grounds with a firearm on Friday.
No one was injured, the Waldo County Sheriff’s Office said.
The office said it arrived at Monroe Elementary School in Monroe on Friday just before 9 a.m. after fielding a report that the student had a firearm.
The sheriff’s office said police worked with school staff to detain the student and seize the firearm. The student was then arrested and taken to the Waldo County Sheriff’s Office.
The office said there was no ongoing threat to the school or the community.
Officials with the school district did not respond to numerous requests for comment.
Monroe is a rural community of about 900 about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northeast of Portland. The small school has about 70 students and is set on a two-lane road amid rolling hills and forest.
The news of a student bringing a firearm to school was alarming, said Ted Pellerin, 64, who lives near the school and sent his own children there years ago. He said it seemed the community avoided a tragedy.
Pellerin said the incident should prompt “a discussion with students about how dangerous something like that could be, how seriously something like that could be.”
The town is home to craftspeople and professionals who commute to Bangor and Belfast, Pellerin said. It once had a larger agricultural sector, but that has diminished.
“It’s a quiet, rural community with nice people who support each other,” he said.
The sheriff’s office and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were investigating the incident, police said.
No further information on the incident was immediately released.
Other communities have seen their share of guns showing up at elementary schools. Most recently, in Newport News, Virginia, a teacher was shot and injured in January by a 6-year-old boy who brought a gun. A prosecutor said he would not seek charges against the child, but he has yet to decide whether any adults associated with the case could be held criminally liable.
In Naples, Florida, an 11-year-old elementary school student was arrested in 2021 after bringing an unloaded gun to school and threatening two classmates, authorities said. In 2017, authorities said a first-grade student in Newton, Mississippi, was shot and wounded when another child was playing with a gun at school.
And back in 2000, a 6-year-old boy was accused of killing a classmate in Mount Morris Township, Michigan. He was deemed too young to be charged.
