The grenade has been taken for examination by Defence Force munitions experts but is believed to have been an inactive device, possibly from the First World War. The school's headmaster, Boyd Allen, said the girl's teacher brought the grenade to him and he immediately evacuated the 450 students and 60 teachers and called the police. "I wasn't sure if it was a dummy and I didn't want to take that chance," he said.
Mr Allen, from the Hunter Christian School in Newcastle, said the girl would not be punished. "She's bewildered, embarrassed – I tried to make her aware she's not in trouble,'' he said. "She's a sweet young lady from a lovely family. She understood it to be a dummy hand grenade that had been deactivated, there was no firing pin, just the body of the grenade. It was heavy, but I assume practice grenades would weigh that much too."
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Police said the device had been inspected by Defence Force experts, who took it for testing and would probably destroy it. "There's no doubt that it did pose a potential threat and the actions we've had today are appropriate in the circumstances," said Police Inspector Gerard Lawson. "In a classroom, certainly if it was live and it was a fully functioning device it would cause serious injuries to all the occupants."
3 comments:
If this happened in the US, the girl would have been expelled and/or charged with a crime. Australia has some common sense left.
60 teachers for 450 students? What a marvelous teacher-to-student ratio! Is it a private school? I used to have anywhere from 32 to 56 kids per class. I can't even imagine how much progress and real learning these kids could achieve!
56 in a class!
Good grief.
When I went to school class sizes were in the high thirties and I thought that was a lot.
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