Gun arrest made at school; pepper spray used at lunch

Friday, May 2, 2003 | 11:18 a.m.

Three boys were arrested Wednesday at Cheyenne High School on charges of possessing weapons, and at least seven other students were sent home after an unrelated standoff between competing groups, school authorities said.

Two boys were arrested after school Wednesday in the school parking lot on charges of possession of a pistol. Another had been taken into custody earlier in the day on charges of having a BB gun, Clark County School District Police said.

During lunchtime, school police used pepper spray to break up a large standoff between two groups of students. About a dozen students were treated for irritation, and seven were sent home with orders for their parents to appear for conferences.

"It was one of those days as a principal that you want to put in for double pay," Cheyenne High School Principal Ronan Matthew said.

Matthew was telling parents today that the incidents, which did not appear to be related to one another, also were not not believed to be gang related.

Security at the school, at 3200 W. Alexander Road in northwest Las Vegas, was increased Thursday and will remain at a heightened state until tensions at Cheyenne are settled, Couthen said. There were no problems Thursday or early today at the campus, he said.

The incidents began about 11 a.m. Wednesday when a large group of students gathered in a hallway and several members of the crowd challenged each other to fights, Clark County School District Police spokesman Officer Darnell Couthen said.

"Several commands were given by the officers for the crowd to disperse, but it kept getting larger," Couthen said. "At that point it (security) was taken to the next level and that was the use of pepper spray."

Matthew said about a dozen students sought treatment for irritation from the pepper spray, but none of the teens needed to be sent to the hospital.

Matthew said the alleged instigators of the incident were rounded up and given RPC -- required parental conference -- letters to take home. He said the incident appears to be the result of a disagreement between members of two school cliques, but that the subject of their tiff is not known.

Because both groups had mixed ethnic representation, the incident was not racially motivated, Matthew said.

Later that afternoon a boy was arrested for possession of .177 caliber BB gun, school police said.

Then during an after-school surveillance with Cheyenne's two School District police officers, Matthew saw two boys take a backpack out of the trunk of a car, and he ordered them to hand it over to him.

Inside the backpack Matthew found a loaded small-caliber semiautomatic weapon. It was later learned the handgun had been reported stolen, school police said.

The three teenagers were taken to a juvenile detention facility. Their names were not released because they are minors.

"We are still investigating what happened, but at this time there is no evidence to confirm that any of the incidents are gang related," Matthew said. "I have been talking with a number of parents who have called, and they have every right to be concerned, but it was not gang warfare like the TV news made it out to be.

"We have had only one other gun incident this school year that I can remember, and that was at the start of the school year. It has been a relatively quiet year, otherwise."