The investigation into how, why and by whom two .22 caliber bullets were brought into Cazenovia High School on April 4 — prompting a three-hour lockdown and a general anxiety in students, parents and teachers that day — is closed, according to Cazenovia police and district officials.
“Basically there’s nothing further to investigate, no additional leads or developments,” Cazenovia Police Chief Michael Hayes said last week. “The school did an excellent job with it. We have our own theories, and I think it was innocent enough.”
District Superintendent Bob Dubik agreed. “As far as the school district is concerned, the investigation is completed. We can’t prove or disprove anything else at this point,” Dubik said during the board of education’s April 14 regular monthly meeting.
During the meeting, which was the board’s first regularly scheduled gathering since the lockdown occurred, Dubik gave an overview of the entire April 4 event, as well as what the district learned about its emergency response system.
The lockdown occurred the morning of Friday, April 4, after two high school students found two .22 caliber bullets lying in a second floor high school hallway outside a classroom. The students went to inform the principal of what they had found, and when he arrived at the scene the bullets were gone. The high school and middle school buildings were both put on lockdown, allowing nobody in or out, and K9 units were called in to search the buildings for the bullets or any possible firearms.
About two hours after the bullets had been discovered and then disappeared, a male student told the principal that he saw the bullets lying in the hallway, knew they were dangerous and should not have been there and said he flushed them down a toilet to dispose of them. After the K9 units searched the buildings and found to weapons or ammunition, the lockdown was ended.
Dubik said no action was taken against the student who flushed the bullets down the toilet because there is no evidence to prove he did anything wrong.
No reason was ever discovered as to how or why the bullets got into the school, although Hayes said it seemed “likely it was a kid who is hunter who brought the wrong backpack to school [and the bullets fell out], but in this day and age you can’t assume anything.”
Both Hayes and Dubik said the lockdown exposed some shortcomings in the district’s emergency communication system with parents as well as some minor security adjustments that need to be made.
Jason Emerson is editor of the Cazenovia Republican. He can be reached at [email protected].
