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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Coeur d’Alene student arrested after leaving gun in pickup

Courtesy ID




Courtesy ID




Lake City High School. (BUCK / Courtesy)

A Coeur d’Alene high school student was taken into custody Friday morning after another student reported a rifle inside the fellow student’s vehicle parked at Lake City High School.

“The students and staff at Lake City High School are safe and were never in immediate danger,” said Scott Maben, spokesman for Coeur d’Alene Public Schools.

After the sighting, the Coeur d’Alene Police Department responded and interviewed the student whose pickup contained the gun. Officers “determined that the student had planned to go target shooting after school,” Maben said in a news release. “No threat was intended by the student,” who was placed in custody, he said.

Maben said it was his understanding that the student was arrested under a state law that prohibits anyone from bringing a weapon for a firearm to school grounds.

Maben said he didn’t know what kind of rifle was in the pickup.

School administrators were alerted of its presence at 9:45 a.m. School had started at 7:40 a.m., Maben said. The vehicle was parked in the student lot, near Ramsey Road on the northeast corner of campus.

“As part of our school safety program, our school staffs routinely emphasize ‘See Something, Say Something,’ ” Maben wrote. “Today’s incident demonstrates the importance of this practice and this student is to be commended for reporting what he saw to school officials. Our security response worked as designed.”

Officials never placed the high school on lockdown, Maben said.

“There wasn’t any time where there was a weapon or a threat inside the building,” Maben said.

Coeur d’Alene police Detective Mario Rios, who is a school resource officer, said the officer who arrested the student was still writing his report Friday, so many of the details of the case were not known.

Rios said it was his understanding that the rifle was not left in plain sight in the student’s pickup.

“I’m not aware how the reporting student was made aware of its presence,” Rios said.

“Even though there was no imminent danger or threat, school officials and the SRO did an excellent job in intervening. School officials reacted quickly and did a phenomenal job, in my opinion.”