Two Florida Middle-School Students Arrested for Bringing Gun to Campus

Two middle-school students in Florida were recently arrested after being discovered to have brought a gun to campus.

The Miami Herald reports that the teens are suspected to be members of a gang, and that they brought the weapon to school amidst alleged rising tensions with another gang.

Notably, the .25-caliber pistol that police seized from the students was not found to be loaded. The Miami-Dade school district released a statement regarding the arrest, explained that they were made aware of the gun “by other students.”

“Information that comes to the school district about potential threats to our schools is handled with immediacy and determination,” the statement added. “Florida’s recent school shooting tragedy has heightened awareness and increased stress levels among school staff and law enforcement, providing no tolerance for violations of the code of student conduct.”

The new report comes only two weeks after a tragic mass shooting at another Florida school.

As has been widely reported, on Valentine’s Day, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and opened fire, killing 17 students and teachers. Cruz was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder, one for each of the people he confessed to murdering.

It was recently revealed that Cruz took an Uber to commit the third largest school mass shooting in American history, and the driver who picked him up finally shared with reporters what he said to her.

“I saw him with a backpack which I thought was a guitar case,” the unidentified driver told reporters. “He told me, ‘I am going to my music class.’”

She later explained that when she heard the news of the shooting she was shocked. “I saw the news and I thought, ‘Oh, I just left someone over there.’ But I never knew it was the guy in my car,” she said.

In the aftermath of the shooting, the driver continued to work and even dropped off a passenger at a funeral for one of the victims. “I made an Uber and I went to a funeral and I started to cry,” she explained. “I don’t know. I feel involved with all this tragedy.”

Cruz’s former ROTC leader also spoke out about the teen, saying he thought Cruz was odd but not dangerous.

Jack Ciaramello is a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High where Cruz was kicked out of and returned to carry out the attack. Ciaramello is also a leader in the school’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.

Ciaramello explained that his interactions with Cruz left him feeling like the confessed gunman was somewhat troubled, but he says that he never imagined he was capable of carrying out a mass shooting.

According to The Daily Mail, Ciaramello was not at school during the time of the shooting but his younger brother was.