Teen arrested after Mullins High lockdown, search

MULLINS — The search for an armed teen reported to have been on the Mullins High School campus ended with the arrest of a 15-year-old boy at a mobile home on East Lowman Street on Thursday morning.

Mullins schools, which had been locked down, were back to normal late Thursday morning, an official with Marion County School District 2 said.

The boy’s arrest came after deputies locked down all Mullins schools — McCormick Elementary, Mullins Early Childhood Center, Mullins High, North Mullins Primary and Palmetto Middle — to search for him.

The search began after a group of girls at Mullins High reported seeing a young black man with a goatee with a pistol in his pants, Marion County Sheriff Mark Richardson said.

Officials said the teen was either dropping off or picking up a student at the school when he showed a gun to another student. Richardson said the teen never entered Mullins High.

When found, the boy told officers he’d only had a toy gun, but deputies found a silver revolver in his possession.

The gun wasn’t loaded when deputies found it, but investigators said they have reason to believe it had been loaded earlier.

The teen will be charged with disturbing schools and possessing a firearm on school property, Richardson said.

The residence at 231 E. Lowman St. where the teen was found had been searched by officers earlier in the week as part of another investigation.

Lamont Johnson and Henry Lee Hill were taken into custody there and charged with receiving stolen goods Monday.

In that case, police found .22-caliber ammunition and a .380-caliber pistol.

During Thursday’s search for the teen who prompted the lockdown, authorities blocked off portions of Lowman Street and evacuated surrounding residents.

Some left without even having time to put on their shoes or properly secure their homes.

“We heard all the sirens and everything, I was just waking up and the police came and said we had to evacuate because there was someone armed and dangerous with a gun in the trailer, and they told us we had to get out,” Lowman Atreet resident Brittany Goodson said.

“I was just scared for them … trying to get them to safety was all I was trying to do,“ said Anniebell Goodson, who left her Lawson Street home with her children and grandchildren.

Marion County sheriff’s investigators and Mullins police said they have trained continuously to handle the type of situations they encountered Thursday and feel they handled the situation well.

“We’ve been training for several years now on situations like this, several times a year, but you know you never can tell what it’s going to be like until it actually happens,” Richardson said.

The sheriff assured parents the teen never actually entered the high school building, and that the lockdown measures were taken immediately once the threat was discovered.

Mullins Police Chief Kenny Davis said police worked closely with county investigators to effectively handle the situation.

“Even before the Columbine shooting, with situations involving schools, especially respective of guns, we take each and every issue like that seriously, we deal with it as a credible threat until we know that it is … no longer a credible threat,” Davis said.

The teen suspect was taken to the state Department of Juvenile Justice in Columbia.

200 BLOCK OF EAST LOWMAN STREET

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ADDITIONAL PICTURES

Photo by Naeem McFadden
Public safety officials block off Lowman Street at its intersection with Park Street in Mullins on Thursday morning.