St. Mary’s Schools Superintendent Michael J. Martirano speaks during the final press conference of the day

After more than eight hours of investigating at the Leonardtown High School complex on Friday no gun or suspected armed student was ever found by police. But the investigation will continue.

St. Mary’s Sheriff David Zylak told The Bay Net that police cleared the scene at about 5:30 p.m., after the building was meticulously searched.

While the reported student with a gun was never located, Zylak said he is not ready to call the incident a hoax.

 

He classified the original report from a student and his grandmother as credible. They told police they saw a student place a handgun in his backpack and head toward Leonardtown High School as students were filing into homeroom class. Both subjects were interviewed by police individually and gave the same exact description.

Zylak said the student said he recognized the armed student from the hallways of the high school, but did not know him personally, and could not locate him in the yearbook.

Hopefully, Zylak said, when the student sees the suspect again he will tell police his identity.

During the ordeal, parents on the scene were kept constantly updated. St. Mary’s Sheriff’s Deputy Cusic was at the fairgrounds where parents and onlookers gathered giving continual updates starting as early as 9 a.m.

Despite what was reported by other media organizations, there were only two arrests on Friday, no gun was found in the school and it was not finals week at the high school.

Two “construction workers” were located behind the school while police had the building on lockdown and were found to be in possession of marijuana paraphernalia. Zylak was unaware where the men were working, but it may have been an adjacent property.

A TV station reported that a gun was found in the building, but Zylak said that was untrue. Also reports of several other drug arrests were equally untrue.

While the students were still in the building, emergency services teams, also known as “SWAT”, patted down every student and checked all book bags, Zylak said.

After students were dismissed, a team of bomb-sniffing dogs that can detect gun powder scanned all the lockers in the building.

No drugs were found on students or in any lockers, possibly because the K9s used were trained to detect gun powder, not drugs. Drug sniffing dogs are trained to scratch and bark at drugs, bomb dogs are trained to sit and stare when they locate an explosive.

“You don’t want a drug dog accidentally scratching at a bomb,” the sheriff said.

Zylak commended all the responding emergency agencies, school officials, and government officials “for all their help and support.”

“All that tr