CHESTER TOWNSHIP, Ohio — An 18-year-old student who was arrested Monday morning after being found with a gun at West Geauga High School is now facing attempted murder and other charges related to a possible school shooting that was averted thanks to an alert student.
Brandon M. Morrissette is charged with attempted aggravated murder, a first-degree felony; illegal possession of a deadly weapon in a school, a fifth-degree felony and inducing panic, a first-degree misdemeanor, according to Chardon Municipal Court records.
Chester Township Police Chief Craig Young, Geauga County Prosecutor Jim Flaiz and West Geauga Local Schools Superintendent Richard Markwardt held a news conference on Wednesday to address what happened and the investigation that followed.
You can watch the full news conference in the player below:
According to Young, another student notified the school's resource officer that he found a bullet in the boys' restroom. The resource officer and school officials combed through video surveillance showing nearly two dozen people had entered the bathroom before the bullet was found. Each student seen on camera was removed from their classroom and interviewed.
At around 9 a.m., Morrissette was interviewed, and a 9mm handgun with three loaded magazines was found in his backpack. He was also armed with a knife. Police arrested the student immediately, and students and staff were ordered to shelter in place while additional law enforcement officers arrived, Young said.
Out of an abundance of caution, the Russell Township Police Department and the Geauga County Sheriff's Office responded at Chester Township Police's request, Young said. The school was dismissed for the day, and authorities conducted a security sweep of the building.
According to the police chief, during an interview with officers, Morrissette "admitted to using prior calculation and design in developing a plan to cause harm to students" at the school that day with the gun police had found in his bag.
Authorities obtained a search warrant and went to the student's home in Lyndhurst, where additional evidence was gathered.
Police took the teen to a nearby hospital, and he was later placed in a secure mental health facility. Once the hospital releases him, he will be remanded back into police custody and then taken to the Geauga County Safety Center to await arraignment.
The police chief said a possible school shooting was averted by a vigilant student who reported finding a bullet to authorities. He also said the actions that school officials took after being informed of the bullet saved lives that day.
"The decisions made by administrators and faculty on the morning of April 3 were appropriate and direct, and I have no hesitation in saying that those decisions saved the lives of students and faculty," Young said. "Dr. Markwardt, Principal (Ryan) Patti, Assistant Principle (Victor) Puskas and countless other faculty members of West Geauga Schools should be proud of their efforts and most importantly the outcome: No students or faculty were injured."
Markwardt commended the response from high school administrators, law enforcement and the student who found the bullet.
"There is no one size fits all response to a crisis. Monday, our staff and local law enforcement agencies, with the cooperation of our students, successfully navigated such a challenge. The fact that we were able to do so rests in large part on the actions of a student who did what he knew was right. He reported a suspicious finding to a school resource officer," Markwardt said.
During the news conference, the police chief was asked why the shelter-in-place order came later in the morning after the bullet had been found and not immediately. He responded that initially, there were a lot of unknown factors about what was happening.
"The information we had was that there was a bullet in the bathroom. There was access to the school over the weekend where other individuals had been in the school. So there's really an unknown where that all that could have come from. And then there's always that investigative process that occurs after that," Young said.
"School resource officers and administrators had to look through a substantial amount of video evidence to narrow down students that had exited that restroom from the time the bullet was found. So it can be a laborious process, but one that is necessary and one that they had to do. I want to say it really would have been premature to act at that time. And we didn't really want to cause undue panic or concern until we knew there was a threat. And once that was established and we knew there was a threat, then we took action at that time," Young said.
He continued, "Every incident is fluid. Every incident is different, and the way we handle them has to be based on information and the facts that we have at the time. You always have to think about a scenario where if we prematurely or Dr. Markwardt prematurely lock down the school, that can almost sometimes be a triggering effect to somebody that's in a mental health crisis. So we want to keep things as normal as possible until we have a reason to shelter in place or we have a reason to lock down. Any little thing could trigger somebody, so we wanted to make sure that we had the facts and the information before we made that decision, and we could control things."
The school district and police department received some criticism from parents at a school board meeting earlier this week, with the parent of the student who found the bullet during first period concerned about the timetable of when the bullet was found and when the shelter-in-place order was given later in the morning, during third period.
One of the points the parent raised was that her son was sent back to class after alerting the school resource officer. Her son told her teacher why he had been gone so long, which Morrissette overheard as he was sitting in the classroom as well, prior to having been searched by police.
The parent said that by telling the teacher why he was gone so long while in earshot of Morrissette, it made her son a target.
"So my questions are: Why was my child sent back to class after finding a bullet, making him a target?" the parent said during the school board meeting. "Why did the resource officer, whose job is to protect, not follow the most basic of police protocol when he contaminated evidence by touching the bullet without gloves?"
The parent continued, "Why was the shelter-in-place not enacted until halfway through third period, which I did already hear (a) reply saying it was not to cause panic—which I assure you that teenagers with cell phones already knew what was happening by third period. What if the student with the gun had an accomplice who was not in that classroom and was notified of my son's discovery? But most concerning of all, what did the school district do to protect my child today? My child protected the other students. But what did you do to protect my child today? Because they got somebody else was looking out for them, because it wasn't you."
Prosecutor Flaiz said Wednesday during the news conference that parental concerns said in the school board meeting were unfounded as school faculty and police acted in the manner they should.
"I'm frankly very bewildered why there are those criticisms. This was handled, in my opinion, absolutely correctly and properly from beginning to end. And, you know, if you really want to be a Monday morning quarterback, you find the round in the bathroom, you lock down the school. Now you've locked a potential school shooter in a classroom with 20 kids, and he's got a handgun in his backpack. So that would not have been the right course of action. They took the right course of action. They quickly and efficiently, with the school resource officer administration, went through the video, narrowed down the possible kids that could be and then plucked them individually out of class and questioned them individually and got a very quick and safe resolution to this. So they absolutely did the right thing," Flaiz said.
The case will be bound over to a grand jury for consideration.
RELATED: 18-year-old West Geauga High School student arrested for firearm on school grounds
You can watch News 5's previous coverage of the teen's arrest in the player below:
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