Let’s call the incident earlier this month at Sebastian River High School – where an 18-year-old student’s alleged attempt to smuggle THC-loaded vapes onto campus prompted fears of an armed intruder – a teachable moment.
Certainly, it needs to be.
Students who attend our public schools need to know they may not open unauthorized gates to allow anyone, even other students, to enter their campuses.
They need to understand the consequences of such actions could be catastrophic and know the punishment will be severe, even if their intentions were entirely innocent.
They need to accept they are growing up in a time when school shootings are part of our culture – as we saw in Parkland in 2018, as we saw again last week at Florida State University, as we’ve seen too many times in too many places across America since the Columbine massacre 26 years ago in Colorado.
Apparently, however, at least one younger Sebastian River student was unaware of the potential dangers when, on the morning of April 4, he opened an unauthorized gate to let Dejaveon Scott, the 18-year-old accused vape dealer, onto the school’s campus.
According to School Superintendent David Moore, the student knew Scott was a fellow student but didn’t know him personally.
“They weren’t friends or associates in any way, and it wasn’t anything pre-arranged,” Moore said.
“The older kid was at the gate and said, ‘Hey, let me in,’ and the younger kid opened the gate.”
The younger student didn’t know Scott had already been turned away at Sebastian River’s main entrance because he wasn’t carrying his school-issued identification badge.
We can assume he didn’t know Scott was, according to a Sheriff’s Office arrest report, in possession of the vapes.
Did he know Scott wasn’t carrying a gun?
Did he even think about it?
The thought should have crossed the younger student’s mind: Moore said Sebastian River students participated in an active-shooter drill only a week before the kid opened that gate.
But because it didn’t – or he caved to some self-inflicted peer pressure to impress an older student – the kid potentially put an entire campus in jeopardy.
He also got himself in trouble, though he didn’t realize it until a school security monitor who witnessed Scott’s entry brought both students to the dean’s office.
There, Scott underwent a search that turned up a vape. The arrest report states that when the security monitor touched Scott’s waistband, “she felt what she believed to be a firearm.”
That’s when Scott began running, and both the security monitor and dean told deputies they saw him holding a “black object” in his hand. They said he threw away “something” when he reached a wooded area.
Scott was quickly apprehended and questioned before being arrested and taken to jail. Deputies conducted a search of the wooded area and discovered what they say was the THC-loaded vape the suspect discarded.
No gun was found, but deputies said Scott’s backpack contained a “wad” of bills totaling nearly $2,000. He was charged with two counts of possession of a controlled substance, trespassing on school property and disrupting a school function.
Not knowing if Scott was armed, Sebastian River administrators responded to his decision to flee by immediately ordering a Code Red lockdown at the school.
The younger student, meanwhile, told deputies he was just trying to be helpful when he opened the gate – and there’s no reason to doubt him.
The kid made a mistake.
But it was a reckless and grievous mistake that could have had disastrous ramifications, if the fellow student he let in had been a bad actor who deliberately evaded the school’s metal detectors and was armed and ready to wreak havoc on campus.
Again, it has happened before.
The fear of such a tragedy occurring here is why the School District has erected additional fencing to limit entryways onto campuses, installed metal detectors at Vero Beach and Sebastian River high schools, and increased the number of security monitors at schools.
Four years ago, Sebastian River had four security monitors. Now, there are 32.
“I am not happy at all,” School Board Chair Teri Barenborg said. “We have all these measures in place to keep our kids safe – security monitors, resource officers, metal detectors, surveillance cameras – and then the kid does something like that.
“He needs to be punished, and I’m making sure of it,” she added. “We need to set an example.”
The younger student has been suspended from school and could be expelled, though Moore said such an extreme punishment is unlikely. It’s possible the student could be assigned to Indian River Prep, the district’s alternative center for education, with the ability to earn his way back to Sebastian River.
Moore said the student, who was not identified because he’s a juvenile, also faces a criminal charge of disrupting a school function.
Is that enough of a deterrence to make sure no other student in our community opens an unauthorized gate for someone else? Or do our state legislators need to stiffen the penalties for subverting school-security measures?
“That might be something they need to look at,” School Board Vice Chair Peggy Jones said. “Students need to understand what’s at stake. Even in this case, the kid didn’t really know the guy he was letting in.”
On the positive side, the school-security protocols the district had put in place proved to be effective:
- Scott wasn’t permitted to enter the school without his ID badge.
- A security monitor on patrol observed the unauthorized entrance onto the campus and immediately responded, escorting both Scott and the younger student to the dean’s office.
- When Scott fled, he was quickly apprehended and the discarded vape was found.
“You don’t want it to happen, but you had these safety systems, personnel and resources in place to ensure that what was a scary incident was handled using every protocol to make sure kids were safe,” Moore said.
“Fortunately,” he added, “it ended up being just a student who had vapes that he was trying to sell, and we were able to get back to teaching and learning as quickly as possible.”
This time.
Let’s hope students in our community learn from what happened at Sebastian River, understand why so many security measures are necessary in these crazy times, and protect themselves.
Next time, the guy at the gate might be hiding more than vapes in his waistband.
