- A 12-year-old Harvard boy was taken into custody Wednesday morning after he was identified as the student who left one spent shell casing on a school bus and two more on the floor in a boy's bathroom at Harvard Junior High School, according to Harvard police.
The incident in Harvard Community School District 50 in the far northwest agricultural community is not related to a shell casing found by custodians in the cafeteria Monday morning at Crosby Elementary School, school officials said.
"The youth reportedly brought three .30 cal. spent shell casings to school to show friends," according to a press release by the Harvard Police Department. "The youth subsequently realized the consequences of his actions after losing one on the school bus, so he discarded the other two shell casings at school."
Spent brass. Not a whit of explosives contained within. Not a gun in sight that would even have been used. Collected from an exhibition, maybe a firearms exhibition. And what do little boys take from such demonstrations? Souvenirs. Something to remember an event by.
And the words used by the media to describe this? Scare tactics in the extreme:
- Harvard Police responded to Crosby Elementary School, at 401 Herley Dr. and the Harvard Junior High School, 1301 N. Garfield Road, when they learned ammunition was found at the junior high school and on a bus located at Crosby.
School staff discovered the ammunition at about 8:30 a.m. in a boy's washroom at the junior high school and the ammunition on the bus was located by the driver around the same time, according to police. The bus had carried the boy to the junior high then parked at Crosby, officials explained.
During a thorough inspection, officials said, all district schools were on lock down.
Police, school staff and administration conducted an extensive search that included all lockers. School officials said all students were kept in their classrooms where they remained until the threat of any danger was dispelled.
Threat from what? No primer, no powder, no projectile. And describing the spent brass as "ammunition," not once or twice, but three times? The anti-gun crowd isn't going to waste a moment making this into a giant scare tactic. And the 12-year-old? Just a victim of the liberal propaganda machine run amok.