One day after a Miramar High School student was found with an unloaded gun by the school’s metal detectors, a loaded gun was discovered in the boys’ locker room, officials said.
A school security employee found a note on the ground near the boys’ locker room Tuesday that said there was a loaded gun and where it was located, Miramar Police spokesperson Janice McIntosh said.
John Sullivan, spokesperson for Broward County Public Schools, said the gun was found wrapped in a T-shirt in the locker room.
As of Tuesday afternoon, police had not yet found out who brought the gun into campus and no one had been arrested, Sullivan and McIntosh said.
Police and a K9 swept the school to ensure there were no other weapons on campus, McIntosh said.
Police Chief Delrish Moss told reporters Tuesday afternoon that the police department will do forensic testing of the gun to find out who had it, when and where it originally came from. He said he did not know exactly where in the locker room it was found but that it was exposed.
“A gun on campus is concerning in and of itself, but where it’s found is even more concerning,” he said.
On Monday at the same school, metal detectors revealed that a boy had an unloaded gun on him as he tried to enter the building. He was not found to have any ammunition with him. The gun was confiscated, and he was arrested on campus.
Police are investigating why the metal detectors didn’t find the loaded gun, though it remains unclear how long the gun had been on campus, Sullivan and McIntosh said.
“We’re assuming it got in there today but really don’t know how long it’s been there,” McIntosh said.
Moss said that the school has not received any threats and “no information that leads to us having a concern other than these things.”
“I think the fact that there’s been two in two days, it does raise a brow. We don’t know that there’s a connection to any of that,” Moss said. “But of course, when you have something like this, it’s a warning to do the job and take those extra steps. So we’re going to be working extra hard to try to figure this out.”
The School District equipped every high school with walk-through metal detectors at the beginning of the 2024-25 school year. Monday’s incident was the first time a gun had been detected at a county high school this academic year, while Tuesday’s incident was the first time a gun was found on a high school campus, Sullivan said.
Superintendent Howard Hepburn told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Tuesday afternoon that the county’s schools “continue to be safe and secure” with the systems in place.
“It definitely worked yesterday in finding a student with possession of a firearm in his backpack. Today is one of those anomalies that we’re working with Miramar PD to investigate closely to find out how that weapon got on campus,” Hepburn said. “Right now, we don’t know all the details. It could be a coincidence or something from the past that’s been on campus and just hasn’t been found before. There’s so many questions that we have …”
Possession of a firearm on school property is a third-degree felony. Numerous students and at least one parent have been arrested after allegedly having guns, some loaded, on Broward County campuses in recent years, before the metal detectors were installed. In March 2022, a 7-year-old boy at Dillard Elementary School was found with a gun.
Also on Tuesday, Pembroke Pines Police said two students have been arrested for having weapons on campus, apparently part of a self-defense kit that can be bought online. Neither of the students made any threats, and there were no safety concerns at the school, the police department said in a news release shared on X.
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