BARNEGAT – Police reported that suspicions of a student with a gun were unfounded.
Barnegat High School was evacuated after one student saw another student with a duffel bag that appeared to have the barrel of a gun sticking out of it, Chief Keith Germain said.
The school was evacuated and police scoured the building. Seven K9 units were brought in and security videos were reviewed.
“No weapons were found,” the chief said. “We are confident after a thorough review of security video that the report was unsubstantiated. We’ll be working with the school district to debrief and review the response to this incident so that we can identify areas where we can improve our response in the future. Our thanks for the overwhelming K9 support from the Ocean County Sheriff’s Dept, Stockton University PD, Brick PD, and the NJ State Park Police.”
Also today, classes were cancelled in all of Manchester’s public schools. One threat was determined to be unfounded, but then more stories circulated online. In order to give families piece of mind, and to give police time to investigate all of the leads, the district was closed for the day.
Howell High School was recently under high security after a student posted a threatening social media picture. That incident occurred on November 30 when a student posted on Snapchat a photo of an assault rifle between his legs with the caption “Don’t (pull up) tomorrow.” Numerous calls went out to the Howell Township Police Department and the student was arrested. Police discovered that the gun was an AirSoft rifle.
