A 15-year-old student who brought a gun to Wilson High School was arrested Friday morning, according to police and school officials.
No shots were fired, and nobody was hurt, according to the Long Beach Police Department. However, dozens of concerned parents gathered outside the school after receiving a notification from the Long Beach Unified School District about a campus lockdown that included few details.
Police said they were notified that a boy at the school had a gun around 10:50 a.m.
“When officers arrived, the suspect was being detained detained by LBUSD school safety personnel,” police said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Authorities then performed a “thorough search” of the campus, and “a firearm was found and the student was arrested,” Principal Suzanne Caverly said in a statement.
It’s not clear yet why the student brought the gun to campus. Parents and students discussing a possible motive were passing around a photo that appeared to be of a boy showing off a loaded magazine and a weapon on social media. They also said it may have been linked to a fight between students that occurred a day earlier. Police have not confirmed this, saying they are still investigating.
The incident sent dozens of worried parents flocking to the school as their children sheltered in classrooms.
Parent Isabel Anaya said she got a text from her son at 11:11 a.m. that they were on lockdown and it “was not a drill.”
She then got a message from the district 20 minutes later saying that Wilson High School was on “precautionary lockdown because of law enforcement activity.”
It said all students and staff were safe but offered no follow-up information.
When Anaya got to the school, she said a police officer told people waiting outside that there was no shooting and that police had detained a suspect.
Janet Jimenez, a parent of one student, said she left work after her daughter told her that the school went on lockdown.
She said she’s disappointed that the district did not notify parents more quickly.
“If there’s someone with a gun, the school should tell us,” Jimenez said. “It makes me want to leave the district.”
The lockdown lifted at about 12:45 p.m. with an announcement dismissing the students to a 30-minute lunch.
Jimenez said she was taking her daughter out of school for the day.
An LBUSD spokesperson declined to say what disciplinary action the student will face.