EVERETT — A senior prank gone too far led to seven Everett High School seniors being placed in handcuffs two days before they were scheduled to graduate.
Everett police Sgt. John DeRousse said the students gathered early Thursday morning at the high school. They poured bleach on the school’s front lawn, trying to form the 20-foot-tall numbers “2010.”
The students, ages 18 and 17, also uprooted several shrubs and dragged them inside the high school after climbing in through a window, DeRousse said.
Summoned by a break-in alarm, police found the seniors hiding in the bushes around the school. They were arrested and are expected to face trespassing and malicious mischief charges.
“Sometimes kids get caught up in a prank and it turns into something more,” DeRousse said.
Some in the community say the young men involved were not allowed to participate in their graduation ceremony Saturday. The school district refused to discuss specifics of the discipline they received.
“I can’t talk about the discipline imposed,” Everett Public Schools spokeswoman Mary Waggoner said “All I can tell you is discipline was imposed.”
Waggoner said the seven students who were arrested were expelled from school Thursday, along with three others who were somehow involved.
School administrators contacted each student’s family and worked with police to investigate who did what and to figure out a punishment, she said.
Waggoner declined to give the students’ names or much other information, citing federal privacy laws.
When asked about the incident Tuesday, the school district did release a prepared statement that said district officials met all day Friday with the students and their parents to “ensure access to the disciplinary grievance procedure.”
“It is very sad when good kids make poor decisions that impact so many people — their families, other students and staff whose attention was drawn away from end-of-year student achievements, to end-of-year disappointments and discipline,” Superintendent Gary Cohn said in the statement.
Damage to the shrubs and the lawn was estimated at around $800, according to the police.
Waggoner said most other students probably “weren’t even aware of it.”
On Tuesday afternoon the numbers were barely visible in the grass.
Debra Smith: 425-339-3197, dsmith@heraldnet.com
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