Beaufort-area student charged with setting off fireworks in school bathroom
A Beaufort-area high schooler was charged in family court with setting off fireworks in a school restroom last week, according to police. The school resource officer at Battery Creek High School received a report around 8:30 a.m. Feb. 4 of someone igniting fireworks in the building, which was “causing distress” among some teachers in the school’s “upper A-hall,” a sheriff’s office incident report says.
In a nearby boy’s restroom, the SRO found the “remnants of exploded fireworks on the floor and sink,” according to the report, which noted there was no visible fire damage. Officials viewed the school’s surveillance video from that morning showing the suspect with another student, the two of whom were described in the police report as brothers. A teacher and administrator later found the suspect “with a packet of firecrackers” in a nearby stairwell, the report says. Neither brother confessed to the act during an initial interview, the report says. But after being shown the surveillance footage, the brother who was found in the stairwell “admitted to setting off the fireworks” in the restroom, the SRO noted. Police petitioned the student to family court on a “fireworks charge,” the incident report says. Master Sgt. Robert Herlong of the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office said he did not have information about the specific charge that was filed.
No significant damage from the fireworks was reported in the boy’s bathroom, according to Candace Bruder, a spokesperson for the Beaufort County School District. She declined to comment on how the student was disciplined.
Fireworks are classified under the school district handbook’s list of “weapons and dangerous objects.” Students who bring fireworks on school property are subject to at least a Tier I discipline response — which can include parent-teacher conferences or exclusion from extracurricular activities — or, at most, long-term suspension or expulsion, the handbook says.
The firework incident occurred the day after another Battery Creek high schooler was found with the upper half of an assault rifle in his backpack, according to previous reporting. Deputies found the rifle’s other half stowed away at the 17-year-old’s Burton-area home, but he was not charged because he was not in possession of the entire weapon on school property, police said.
The rifle parts were flagged by the school district’s new weapons detection systems, which were installed in all Beaufort County public high schools in early December.
