Gun fired at bus stop not the one found at school
BOYNTON BEACH — Police found a gun Friday at Boynton Beach High School, but it wasn’t the one that a student fired at a bus stop, records show.
That gun, which put the school on lockdown for hours, was found at a home about a mile off campus about three hours after the lockdown ended, according to Boynton Beach police.
Palm Beach County School District authorities have not elaborated on the gun that police dogs found in a student’s possession on campus beyond saying that it was unloaded. The district declined to comment Monday, saying it still is investigating Friday’s events.
The student who fired that shot, 18-year-old Wanya Evan Brown, was arrested Friday on charges from Boynton Beach and school district police that include numerous weapons-related offenses, as
well as charges of disturbing the peace and having a weapon on school property. He also faces an unrelated burglary charge stemming from an incident in March.
Circuit Judge Catherine Brunson ordered Saturday that Brown remain in the Palm Beach County Jail in lieu of $8,000 bail. The State Attorney’s Office argued he shouldn’t be given a bond at all and called him a “danger to society.” As of Monday afternoon, Brown remained in jail.
A student notified school authorities shortly before 7 a.m. Friday that another student had fired a shot at the bus stop, then gotten on the bus with the gun.
School authorities pulled Brown from class, and he admitted to firing a shot at about 6:30 a.m. in the 100 block of Northeast 17th Avenue. Brown told authorities he saw someone being attacked by a dog, so he ran home, grabbed a 9mm Taurus gun and fired a shot into the air “to scare the dog away.” He told detectives he didn’t want to be late for school, so he put the gun in his backpack and got on the Palm Beach County School District bus at the stop along North Seacrest Boulevard by the Ezell Hester Jr. Community Park.
Brown initially told officers he dropped the gun before getting on the school bus, prompting officers to search the area by the bus stop. But they didn’t find a gun. “With the absence of a recovered gun, it was determined a student was likely armed somewhere on the (Boynton Beach High School) campus,” a city police detective wrote in Brown’s arrest report.
Authorities put the school on a Code Red lockdown for about four hours. City and school police, along with gun dogs, combed the campus. “(Brown’s) actions caused every single student to miss lunch and their designated courses,” school police wrote in an arrest report.
Brown eventually told authorities he handed the gun to the 16-year-old girl in the school’s courtyard after he got off the bus. He told her to give it to a third student, another girl.
It is unclear whether those students stayed on campus or whether they left after receiving the gun.
Authorities didn’t find that gun until about 3 p.m. when the girl handed it over to a Boynton Beach detective who met her and the second girl at a home on Northwest 22nd Street, according to Boynton Beach police.
As of now, those two students will not face charges, detectives said.