The Putnam County Sheriff’s Department continues its investigation into Thursday’s incident where a Monterey High School student brought a firearm to school.
Putnam County Sheriff Eddie Farris said a 9mm handgun found in a student’s vehicle by a K-9 unit after suspicious activities reported. Farris said the department trying to discover the student’s motivation.
“We are still investigating that,” Farris said. “We have no reason at this time to believe that he brought the firearm to school to have any bad intent or to do anything damaging or harmful with the weapon but we want to make sure we are still looking into that, but we don’t think so.”
Farris said on social media many people have said the department is being too harsh on the student. Farris said schools have a zero-tolerance policy for firearms.
“Our job is having the SRO, the deputies, and all the schools is to make sure that we are protecting the students, the teachers, and the faculty and everybody there so nothing bad can happen,” Farris said. “It’s hard to start making exceptions so we have to keep a zero policy and go down the track and then have faith in the judge to make the right decisions.”
The student has been charged with unlawful possession of a weapon on school property. Farris said the department will continue to investigate the incident.
“We don’t want to just kill somebody on paper so they can’t get a good job and can’t do other things throughout his life if he has only made one mistake,” Farris said. “But all of that will be taken into consideration and we will just see and maybe we will get the kid on track and things will be good.”
