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An 11-year-old was arrested Wednesday in Vancouver, Washington, after he brought a handgun, more than 400 rounds of ammunition and several knifes to his school. Vancouver police responded to a call around 9:30 a.m. in Frontier Middle School. The boy, who has not been publicly identified, was arrested before anyone got hurt, but he's being held on attempted murder charge. The middle school and the adjacent Pioneer Elementary School were locked down for about two hours. "We got a message on the intercom, and they said we were in lockdown," sixth-grader Zaniah Matthews told KPTV. "We were under the table for about an hour, and then we could move around."
But how was the school able to identify the kid before anything happened? In a declaration of probable cause filed in court Thursday, police said that the boy's mother called on Wednesday worried that her son had taken knives to school. School resource officers located the boy, patted him down, and found an unloaded .22 caliber handgun in one pocket. He had two loaded .22 caliber magazines in the other pocket. More ammunition and the kitchen knives were found in his backpack. The boy was interviewed by detectives and arrested for investigation of one count of attempted murder, police spokeswoman Kim Kapp said in a statement. The boy was booked into the Clark County juvenile detention center.
According to the court documents, officers said that the boy had "claimed in the presence of school officials that a 'voice in his head' was telling him to kill" another student after he had called the boy's friend "gay." He planned to shoot the other student in the arm and then shoot himself in the head. The boy has been expelled, Evergreen Public Schools spokesman Kris Fay said. "This kid has not been on the radar for this," he said. "From the safety standpoint, everything went well yesterday," Fay said.
This incident comes after a series of violent crimes on school grounds this week. On Monday, a Nevada middle school shooting left two wounded and a dead teacher before a 12-year-old turned the gun on himself. And on Wednesday, a 14-year-old was arrested and charged with murder after police found a teacher's lifeless body near the young teen's school.
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