By James Lomuscio
The grenade was a dud— the kind of curio offered for sale in Army & Navy stores or in novelty shops as cigarette lighters.
Ellliott Landon: principal acted appropriately. Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com
But the mere sight of it in the bag of a third grader at Westport’s Coleytown Elementary School Monday at 3:50 p.m. was enough to launch a 911 call, the rapid arrival of Westport Emergency Services and a full building evacuation.
“When the students were being dismissed, a boy claimed he had a hand grenade,” said Schools Superintendent Elliott Landon.
Teachers and administrators looked in the 8-year-old boy’s bag, and that is exactly what they saw. It was not until the police arrived, said Landon, that school officials learned the grenade was harmless.
“It was not a grenade with explosives,” said Landon. “It was a dud, the kind you can buy.
An overreaction on the part of Janna Bell, Coleytown’s principal?
Landon does not think so. In fact, he praised her actions.
“It’s good that the building principal used all of her training to respond in an appropriate way by clearing the building and protecting the students,” he said.
Bell followed through with emails to all Coleytown parents, explaining what had happened.
“Today a child brought in an instrument that looked like a hand grenade,” she wrote. “Upon learning of this information, I immediately evacuated the building and followed our emergency procedures. All students and staff are safe.
“We worked collaboratively with the Westport Police Department to determine the object was a grenade that had all of its explosive elements removed and at no point was it a threat or danger to the school.
“The building has since reopened. The Westport Public School system takes very seriously the obligation to keep children safe. We are grateful for the rapid response of the Westport Emergency Services in assisting us with this matter.”
For one Coleytown parent of a first grader, Bell’s letter was not enough.
“The mass email does not explain steps taken by the school system or the authorities to investigate the family and home of the child who had access to and brought in a hand grenade, truly unfathomable to us to even have to be writing or discussing this,” Bari Alyse Rudin wrote.
“We feel you need to give us more information regarding what was done and is being done to ensure that this child and family will not have any possibility of bringing any of their other weapons to school, loaded or unloaded.”
Landon said that any time a student talks about “having guns at home” or weapons, the police are contacted to investigate.
All Police and Law enforcement act and respond the way they are trained whether a real gun or toy gun is pointed at them, because that is what they are trained to do. Not responding correctly is just simply not responding. Ms. Bell did absolutely the right thing. Especially in the world today. Parents, not the teachers, have the true responsibility of educating their children of what is right from wrong in society. And it’s amazing how many don’t. But in this situation, I’m sure all authorities involved have a tight handle on the family and incident at hand. Details that won’t be public information.
Since the principal noted that there was “no danger or threat to the school”, why, in the name of logic, did she call out all the fire power? This was a non-event that never should have made the news in the first place.
Not all of us are trained to recognize a grenade without it’s live parts, unfortunately. I’d rather someone err on the side of caution, rather than assume it must be a dud.
There was a soldier a few years ago who brought back live munitions with him, so we can’t assume anything the public has is safe.