Clover parents upset over student who made gun threat, brought pill on school bus

Clover school leaders tried to quell parents’ concerns this week after a Bethany Elementary first-grader said he would “bring daddy’s gun to school” and shoot two others if they teased him, a school district spokesman said.

District spokesman Bryon Dillon said the first-grader who made the shooting comment Friday had, a few weeks earlier, brought an unknown type of pill onto a school bus that was swallowed by another student. The 6-year-old student who swallowed the pill was hospitalized as a result, Dillon said. The hospitalized student has since returned to school, he said.

After Friday’s incident, Dillon said the district sent a letter to parents, which assured them that the school was safe, but did not provide details.

He said the letter has prompted a rash of calls from parents and chatter on social media.

“We tried to take the approach of being informative to parents, and now they have something, but they don’t know it all, and it’s really taken on a life of its own,” he said.

School officials said both cases involving the first-grader were handled under school board disciplinary policies, but they declined to provide details, citing student confidentiality.

Contacted Tuesday afternoon, Michelle Pressley said her son was the child who swallowed the pill on the school bus. She said he was hospitalized overnight at Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte. She said Levine health care workers told her that the pill was some type of anxiety medication, based on her son’s reaction.

Pressley said the incident happened Jan. 28 on the bus ride home from school. When her son got off thebus after taking the pill, she said, he was very sluggish.

At home, Pressley said, he became unresponsive for a couple minutes and his eyes rolled back. He was taken to Levine, where she was told he had “a silent seizure.”

Pressley said her son, who was born premature and has undergone heart surgery, claims the other boy forced him to swallow the pill. She said her son tried to spit out the pill but the other boy “put his hand over his mouth.”

Dillon said school officials reviewed school bus video tapes of the incident and “we found no spot where the student forced” the pill into another student’s mouth.

“We investigated it and did not find that to be the case,” he said.

Pressley said school officials told her the child involved in the pill incident was suspended from the school bus and from school for a couple days as a result.

Dillon said the incident involving the shooting comment happened Friday, when the first-grader saw two other students looking at him during lunch time. Dillon said the boy’s head had been shaved by his parents because his brother had head lice, and both boys were sent home from school for lice treatment. The boy told the other two students that “he would bring daddy’s gun to school and shoot them if they started making fun of him,” Dillon said.

Dillon said the other children “were not making fun of him,” but they reported the comment to a guidance counselor, who told the principal.

Dillon said the school principal handled the case “appropriately,” but said he could not provide futher details.

He said the comment “was not an actual threat, in our opinion. We view that as not a threat, per se. The students will say a lot of things in the classroom on a day-to-day basis, and that’s what we are looking at.”

The school district’s student disipline policy, posted on the district web site, lists three levels of student conduct: disorderly, disruptive and criminal.

The policy lists school sanctions that could range from mild, such as a verbal reprimand or in-school detention, to severe, such as out-of-school suspension, assignment to an alternatiave school or explusion.

A York County Sheriff’s spokesman said neither the department nor school resource officers were aware of either incident involving the school.

The letter sent to parents Monday by Bethany Principal Allison Churm said that “in the past week there have been some incidents occuring at Bethany involving a small number of first-grade students. Unfortunately, many students have been talking about these events when it is not really their concern.”

The letter said a school counselor talked to students “about safety and what to do when you feel afraid. We would like to assure you that our building is secure.”

Dillon said leaders are trying to determine if there is a need for further communication from the district to address concerns from parents.

“We are trying to do our best to answer questions of the parents, trying to put something together that we can share with them,” Dillon said. “But there is only so much we can say about different situations.”

This story was originally published February 9, 2016 at 4:54 PM with the headline "Clover parents upset over student who made gun threat, brought pill on school bus."