Two Royal Palm Beach High School students were arrested this morning after they admitted to deputies that they had loaded firearms in their backpacks, according to a police report.
The students, whose names are not being released because they are minors, were walking near the 7-Eleven at 10274 Okeechobee Blvd. during school hours, when a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputy saw them.
Both told the deputy that they had walked out of school, the police report said. The deputy, who had called for backup, asked the teens, before taking them back to school, if there was something in their backpacks that the deputies should know about.
When the students became nervous, they admitted to having guns in their backpacks and said that they only carried them for protection from other gangs, since they belong to the IG gang, according to the report.
The arresting deputy said in the report that one of the students had a black revolver, with six 22-caliber bullets, a box with another 41 bullets, two folding knife blades and a set of brass knuckles.
The other student, he stated, had a 9-millimeter with a loaded magazine, two more full-loaded magazines in his backpack and two boxes of bullets that totaled 117 rounds. He also had a pen with the tip of a sharp knife.
Both students face one count of carrying concealed firearms and one count of carrying concealed weapons inside and outside school grounds. One will face one count of carrying a concealed weapon, while the other will face three counts of the same charge.