Beaufort students who brought guns to school were ‘best friends.’ Here’s how they got caught
A motive remained unclear after two male students were charged with bringing loaded guns to Battery Creek High School last week. School officials and classmates described the two high schoolers as “best friends,” according to an incident report from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.
The search for the two firearms began less than an hour into the school day March 19, when an anonymous student told an assistant principal they saw one of the boys with a handgun at a “school function” a few days before.
The first student’s gun, a Palmetto State Armory Dagger, was found hidden in the front of his pants, the report says. That discovery led administrators, sheriff’s deputies and a school resource officer to the gym, where inside the second suspect’s backpack they found a Glock 10mm handgun with 14 rounds in the magazine and one loaded in the chamber.
Both boys were sent to the Department of Juvenile Justice in Columbia on Family Court charges of possessing a firearm on school property, which is a felony in South Carolina. Neither student was named by school officials or police because they are minors.
The Beaufort-area high school, which has an attendance of about 800 students, was under lockdown for about 4 hours due to the incident. Both students were put up for expulsion per the policies of the Beaufort County School District.
Believing one of the students could have hidden another weapon on campus, Battery Creek administrators requested the sheriff’s office perform a search of the outer perimeter with a bloodhound after classes ended that day. Nothing suspicious was found.
Since 2021, at least seven students at Beaufort County public schools have been charged with bringing firearms to campus.
‘What is this? Is this a gun?’
After receiving the anonymous tip around 9:30 a.m., BCHS Assistant Principal Daniel Van Winkle pulled the first suspect from class to have him searched “out of an abundance of caution,” the incident report says.
The boy initially refused the search, but his mother gave police permission to pat him down after arriving on campus.
“What is this? Is this a gun?” Winkle was quoted saying in the police report as he found the firearm hidden in the front of the boy’s pants. The SRO then “hurried” over to the student and placed him in handcuffs.
The student’s mother told the boy “not to say anything to anyone” until they found a lawyer, according to the report. He invoked his Miranda rights and did not speak to police.
Shortly after, BCHS Principal Denise Lessard told police she was placing the school on lockdown due to a “possible second gun on campus,” the report says. Administrators and police launched a search for a backpack in the school gym that belonged to the second suspect, who was “best friends” with the student who was just detained.
Lessard found the backpack unattended in the school gym, behind the table used for scoring basketball games. An SRO opened the bag to find the loaded Glock pistol.
The second student was then pulled from class and detained. Also being instructed by his mother to stay quiet until the family hired a lawyer, he refused to speak with law enforcement.
Lt. Danny Allen, a spokesperson for the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, said police had not found evidence that the students intended to use the firearms. The guns had not been reported stolen and weren’t registered to either boy’s parents, he said, raising questions of how the underage students obtained the weapons.
School safety in Beaufort County
Like all other public schools in Beaufort County, Battery Creek’s entrances are not equipped with metal detectors.
In a March interview, Superintendent Frank Rodriguez told The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette the district was “always reviewing” its safety policies. But he stopped short of sharing any future plans about metal detectors, instead offering a handful of downsides to the safety measure that’s seeing increased implementation at schools nationwide.
“Some schools have metal detectors ... but even those schools will tell you that, one, it’s not 100% effective,” Rodriguez said. “And two, sometimes it gives a false sense of security. The third thing they tell you is that it can sometimes be detrimental to school climate and culture, because sometimes students will tell you they feel more insecure having to go through those kinds of things all the time.”
County school board members considered installing metal detectors in schools following a similar scare in 2014, when a student at Bluffton High School brought a loaded gun and several knives to school. Dozens of Lowcountry students organized a walkout in 2018 after the Parkland High School shooting, advocating in part for enhanced safety measures across the district.
This story was originally published March 27, 2025 at 4:45 PM.
