ORIGINALLY WRITTEN DON RATZLAFF
A nonexplosive practice grenade discovered inside Marion Middle School put students and teachers in a lockdown situation for about three hours Thursday before it was verified by a bomb squad from Riley County that the device posed no physical danger.
Lee Leiker, superintendent of USD 408 Marion-Florence, said Monday that local law enforcement on the scene suspected almost from the start that the grenade was non-explosive.
Even so, students and faculty remained under lockdown, in a accordance with the district’s crisis-management plan, until the bomb squad arrived on the scene and confirmed the device was “totally inoperable.”
Leiker said “some middle school students” were involved in bringing the device into the school building, “but to what extent each one is involved I don’t know yet.
“At this point we’re sorting out the involvement of students and really haven’t finished our investigation on that part yet.”
The grenade was discovered in the late morning and the lockdown continued into the afternoon hours.
“We treated it as an explosive device,” Leiker said. “We involved the legal authorities and all the emergency personnel (according to policy).
“As we sort things out, we will analyze how our crisis intervention worked, how we implemented it, what we need to change and what we need to do a better job of,” Leiker said.
“We will analyze our effectiveness, which, in my opinion is part of any good educational system. You plan, you implement, you reevaluate and then you replan. That’s what we’re going to do at this point.”
Marion police, fire and Emergency Medical Service personnel were on the scene from the start.
“We don’t need this kind of drill, but sometimes we get them anyway,” Leiker said.
