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Gun Confiscated From Student At Hopewell High School

A gun was confiscated from a student at Hopewell High School on Wednesday.
A gun was confiscated from a student at Hopewell High School on Wednesday.

A gun was confiscated from a student at Hopewell High School in Huntersville Wednesday.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools officials say this is the fifth incident of a student bringing a gun on campus this year that they are aware of.

It comes after a recent shooting incident at Butler High School in which 16-year-old student Bobby McKeithen was fatally shot by fellow student Jatwan Cuffie, also 16.

In a statement sent to families, Hopewell Principal Tracey Picard said that school officials received a tip from a student that another student was carrying a weapon on campus. According to Picard, school police were notified and the weapon was found on the student.

The student was taken into custody and charged by Huntersville police.

Credit Gwendolyn Glenn
Hopewell High on Beatties Ford Road in Huntersville

During Wednesday night’s school board meeting, Superintendent Clayton Wilcox said the fatal shooting at Butler, along with recent reports of weapons on campus, is making him rethink security measures that he has not wanted to implement in the past. 

The security upgrades Wilcox presented to county commissioners last month did not include metal detectors or wands on campuses. Those options are now on the table.

Gwendolyn is an award-winning journalist who has covered a broad range of stories on the local and national levels. Her experience includes producing on-air reports for National Public Radio and she worked full-time as a producer for NPR’s All Things Considered news program for five years. She worked for several years as an on-air contract reporter for CNN in Atlanta and worked in print as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun Media Group, The Washington Post and covered Congress and various federal agencies for the Daily Environment Report and Real Estate Finance Today. Glenn has won awards for her reports from the Maryland-DC-Delaware Press Association, SNA and the first-place radio award from the National Association of Black Journalists.