SANTA ROSA, Calif. (KRON) — Just minutes before a student was fatally stabbed inside a classroom at Montgomery High School, police were called to another Santa Rosa high school because a student brought a gun on campus, according to investigators.
Maria Carrillo High School administrators called the Santa Rosa Police Department at 10:47 a.m. Wednesday reporting “rumors that a student may have brought a gun on campus,” police wrote.
Officers took a 16-year-old student into one of the school’s offices to question him.
“After briefly speaking with the student, the student ran from the building and tried to avoid the officers. The student ran into the mobile home park located south of the campus, between Montecito Blvd and Parkhurst Drive. The pursuing officer briefly lost a visual of the student, but quickly caught up to and detained him,” SRPD wrote.
Police said the student hid the gun during the short time that he evaded police. Officers searched Maria Carrillo High School’s campus for the gun without finding it Wednesday.
Officers returned to the campus on Thursday, retraced the path the student ran, and found an unloaded handgun in a storm drain on Oakstone Court, near where the boy was arrested.
“This handgun was similar to what MCHS students reported may have been on campus. The 16-year-old student was later booked into the Sonoma County Juvenile Justice Center for possessing a firearm on campus and obstructing/delaying a police officer,” SRPD wrote.
Police expressed gratitude toward MCHS students who reported the gun to school officials, and thanked school administrators who relayed the information to police as soon as they received it.
The Maria Carrillo High School student was one of two Santa Rosa teenagers who were arrested for on-campus incidents this week. A Montgomery High School freshman was arrested on charges of homicide and attempted homicide for allegedly stabbing two juniors in his art class.
One of the juniors, 16-year-old Jayden Jess Pienta, was stabbed three times in the chest, staggered to the nurse’s office, and died in a hospital.
Neither of the arrested boys’ names were released by officials because they are juveniles.
