A staff member at a Washington, D.C. early childhood school was getting ready to hand out Halloween candy on Thursday when they found something tucked inside the box that had nothing to do with trick-or-treating: a gun. The discovery happened at KIPP DC Grow Academy's Shaw Campus, a school that serves children from PreK3 through kindergarten, one day before Halloween.
Staff Secured the Firearm Before Calling Police
According to FOX 5 DC, a staff member at the Shaw campus found the firearm while preparing to give out candy from a box. Staff followed safety procedures and secured the firearm before calling D.C. police, the outlet reported. Officers responded to the school in the 400 block of P Street Northwest around 2:50 p.m. Thursday.
No injuries were reported, and no students came into contact with the firearm, per the same report. School officials notified families about what happened, though the station's account did not detail how that notification was delivered. The Shaw campus sits at 421 P Street NW, according to KIPP DC's website, which lists the Grow Academy as serving the youngest students in the charter network, from PreK3 through kindergarten.
No Arrests, Investigation Ongoing
No arrests were made, and the incident remains under investigation, the station noted. It remains unclear who the gun belongs to or how it ended up in a box of candy, leaving open questions about how a firearm made its way into a school meant for toddlers and kindergartners just ahead of one of the year's biggest kid-centered holidays.
A Longstanding Local Concern Near DC Schools
Gunfire near D.C. schools is not a new worry for families and educators. A review of ShotSpotter data compiled by the Urban Institute found that the technology picked up 336 incidents of gunfire in the city during school hours, defined as 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., over the 2011-12 school year. More than half of those incidents occurred within 1,000 feet of a public school, and a small share of campuses bore the brunt of it: just 9 percent of schools covered by ShotSpotter were exposed to nearly half of all gunfire incidents, each experiencing 8 to 16 incidents over the course of that school year. Twenty-five schools during that same period were exposed to gunfire around typical arrival or dismissal times, between 8 and 9 a.m. or 3 and 4 p.m.
That data predates this week's discovery by more than a decade and does not reflect current conditions in the city, but it underscores a backdrop in which the presence of firearms near schools has long been a documented concern for D.C. families. For now, the specifics of Thursday's find at the Shaw campus, including who placed the gun in the candy box, remain unresolved as the investigation continues.
