Two 13-year-olds facing charges for smuggling loaded gun into Rochester school

ROCHESTER, N.Y. Two students are facing charges after a loaded revolver was discovered inside a school in Rochester’s Corn Hill neighborhood.

Earlier this month, a 14-year-old girl was charged with bringing a gun to a charter school. Police say this time a boy brought a revolver into Dr. Alice Holloway Young School of Excellence without security catching it.

“You never know where these situations could escalate to,” Lt. Greg Bello with Rochester Police Department said. “Why did these kids bring the gun to the school? Were they intending to just show it off or were they intending to use it against others? That’s part of the investigation that’s ongoing.”

Lt. Bello said two 13-year-old boys are facing charges for smuggling a loaded gun into a Rochester school.

“It’s a big danger because you’ve seen across the country, the school shootings,” Bello said. “Thankfully, neither the firearms that we’ve recovered from schools this year have been involved in any shots fired or any threatening things along those lines. But it’s always a concern when a firearm gets into one of those safe spaces.”

In a statement from RCSD, district leaders said: “Yesterday, some students at Dr. Alice Holloway Young School of Excellence circumvented security screening and were able to bring a loaded gun into the building. Upon learning this, the weapon was immediately retrieved and turned over to the Rochester Police Department. The weapon was not used to threaten anyone in the school. Appropriate disciplinary action is being taken. Student safety is a top priority. This is a very serious situation, and the District’s Safety and Security team was deployed to the school. We are working with the RPD to determine how this occurred and are reinforcing with our students the message that if they see or hear something, they should say something to a trusted adult.”

“It circles back to what we say all the time: ‘See something, say something,’” Bello said. “A lot of these crimes out there, a lot of these incidents out there are resolved safely, thankfully, to somebody saying something.”

City schools have security and metal detectors in places, so the big question is how did the gun get past security?

“I’m not going to comment specifically on how the firearm got into the school and refer you to the school through the school district,” Bello said. “But part of that, the reason being is that any time a situation like this happens, everybody goes back and evaluates and they say ‘what could we have done differently to prevent something like this from occurring?’ We also don’t want to let other people know how these kids were able to get the gun in the school while we work to close and the school district works to close whatever security potential loophole was there in place.”