Gun rumor at Benton school proves false

BENTON, Mo. -- Rumors fly fast in a high school, but sometimes they have to be taken seriously.

When the Scott County Sheriff's Department and officials at Kelly High School near Benton learned of a rumor Friday morning that guns were to be brought onto school grounds, they quickly began investigating.

The rumor, later proved false, fingered a group of boys who no longer attended the school as the ones that would bring in the guns, Scott County Sheriff Rick Walter said.

When the boys were located by police, they knew nothing about the rumor. They had been driving in a direction away from the school when they were found.

"It did not seem to be a credible rumor," Kelly School District superintendent Don Moore said.

But even once the investigation proved there was no real threat, rumors persisted throughout town and in the school, according to Walter.

"Once the rumor got out, it spread like wildfire," Walter said, citing students' cell phones and text messaging helping to disperse the false information.

A few parents arrived at the school and pulled their children from class to take them home, which officials allowed, Moore said.

School did not close early for the day.

When teachers heard the rumor, some locked the doors to their classrooms and continued instructing, Moore said. He stressed this was done voluntarily on the teachers' part, and some regularly lock their doors anyway.

In the event the rumor did become a real threat, Moore said, a lockdown would have been ordered. Doors of every classroom would have been locked, as well as the entrances of the high school, he said.

Such a lockdown has never occurred.

Despite the rumor being false, officials still treated it as a bona fide threat, with sheriff's officers maintaining a presence at the school during the investigation.

"It's something you have to take very seriously," Walter said.

kmorrison@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127