Handguns left in school desk after hunter education class

TARKIO, Mo. -- The state has taught thousands of Missourians how to hunt safely in the past 44 years and will teach thousands more in the future.

But in the Tarkio district in far northwest Missouri, the training won't take place any more in elementary or secondary classrooms -- not after volunteers for the Missouri Conservation Department's Hunter Education Class left two handguns behind early last month.

A student at Tarkio Elementary School recently found the two weapons -- a black powder revolver and a .22-caliber pistol -- inside a desk in a storage area where his father was working after school hours. The youngster reported his discovery to a teacher.

Because the Hunter Education Class had taken place weeks earlier, Tarkio Schools Superintendent Mike Mendon did not immediately make the connection.

"When we figured out where they came from, I was relieved," Mendon said. "Knowing that meant we also knew that there weren't other guns or any ammunition on campus, and we knew a student didn't bring them. The potential for danger was eliminated at that point."

Mendon said he wasn't sure if the storage room was locked but said students did not have routine access to it.

More questions

But questions remained.

"We still didn't know how they got there or why they were left behind," Mendon said.

The school board did not wait to get all the answers. At a special meeting last week the board voted unanimously to prohibit the hunter education courses from being conducted in the district's elementary or secondary school buildings.

"I think the board took appropriate action," Mendon said. "They made the decision in the interest of safety. And now this particular event can't happen again."

The handguns were confiscated by the Atchison County Sheriff's Department. Sheriff Dennis Martin said the investigation has netted nothing so far worth turning over to the prosecutor.

Martin said his deputy found that the two guns were stored separately from others used for instruction. The volunteer who collected the weapons at the end of the two-day course did not realize the handguns, owned by another instructor, were missing.

Tim Ripperger, the Conservation Department's northwest Missouri regional supervisor, said he didn't know about the incident until after the school board's vote.

"I fully understand how the board came to the decision they came to," he said. "I am disappointed they came to the decision so quickly."

Ripperger said a classroom is the preferred setting for the course because having a blackboard and desks are helpful for the instructors.

"They need those things more than they need the firearms as props," he said, adding that "we never use ammunition."

Ripperger said the department was trying to find out what happened and would "implement a system to prevent this unfortunate oversight from happening again. We're taking it very seriously."