Forest Hill High teen says he needs his gun

Forest Hill High School sophomore tells police he was shot at earlier.

The 17-year-old said he brought a loaded handgun to campus on Friday because he’d been shot at and needed to protect himself.

WEST PALM BEACH — A sophomore brought a loaded handgun Friday to Forest Hill High School because he needed protection, the 17-year-old told Palm Beach County School District police.

The teen was arrested Friday morning on a charge of possessing a loaded handgun at school.

School police found the gun while patting down the student. They had pulled him from class because of an open probation-violation charge in a curfew case, West Palm Beach police said.

The teen said he had the gun, and the three bullets inside it, because someone shot at him the previous Sunday, so he needed protection. That shooting, he said, stemmed from unresolved problems in his West Palm neighborhood. City police did not have any record of the shooting.

However, records indicate he was stabbed in the back in 2016 during a fight in Riviera Beach.

The teen has been arrested on felony charges at least three times in the past two years. Once was for reportedly “car hopping” while he was a freshman at Palm Beach Gardens High School. Another arrest came when he was an eighthgrader at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Riviera Beach. Police said he and other boys robbed their classmate who was waiting for a bus.

He was arrested in October 2015 on burglary and theft charges when West Palm Beach officers reportedly saw him and another teen going into a car near Clematis Street.

Palm Beach County school authorities have found at least three other guns in county schools this year, including one found Tuesday in Greenacres in a Cholee Lake Elementary School student’s backpack.

A loaded gun was found Jan. 26 on a cabinet in a classroom during dismissal at William T. Dwyer High in Palm Beach Gardens. And last month a Boynton Beach middle school student was suspended after allegedly bringing a gun to school.