Two Ignacio High School students will likely be expelled after bringing a pellet gun onto a school bus Wednesday afternoon.
No students were in danger during the incident, said Kathy Pokorney, curriculum director and primary liaison for the district.
One student was showing another student an unloaded pellet gun on the bus, according to the Ignacio Police Department. A student told middle school staff about the pellet gun Thursday morning. By 8 a.m., the school district had reviewed video footage from the bus, called the high school students’ parents and alerted the Ignacio Police Department and the La Plata County Sheriff’s Office, Pokorney said.
The school district notified parents Thursday night by email, text message and a message on the school’s website after receiving initial information from law enforcement.
“We take this very seriously,” Pokorney said. “If there had been a danger, the information would have come out much sooner and we would have also used the phone dialer.”
The two high school students are suspended pending expulsion, which will be finalized when Superintendent Rocco Fuschetto returns from an absence, Pokorney said.
The school resource officer from the Ignacio Police Department, the dean of students at the high school and the Sheriff’s Office conducted an all-day investigation Thursday.
Chris Burke, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office, said the agencies determined the incident was in Ignacio Police Department’s jurisdiction. The school district alerted the Sheriff’s Office because of the location of the bus at the time of the incident.
“The matter is still under investigation,” said Sgt. Wes Crume with the Ignacio Police Department. “When it’s completed, I’ll have more information, but at this point in time I can’t share anything.”
The school district has security provisions in place on buses to address safety concerns. The school’s fast response was attributable, in part, to the video cameras in the buses. Bus drivers complete active-shooter training, CPR training, first-aid training and Stop the Bleed trainings, Pokorney said.
“It’s a scary thing to think of it happening on a bus,” she said.
smullane@durangoherald.com
