JACKSONVILLE BEACH, FL. (THECOUNT) — Derrick L. Conner has been identified as the teen arrested at Jacksonville Beach St. Paul’s Catholic School after being caught on-campus carrying two handguns, loaded clips and a ski mask on Friday. Conner, 16, was found not to be a student at the parochial school of over 700 students and dozens of staff.
An observant teacher summoned a campus police officer after noticing a teenager acting suspiciously just before 11 a.m. Friday.
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“The officer was there literally within seconds,” Jacksonville Beach Police Chief Mark Evans said. “And the officer started talking to the kid and realized that he really should not be there.”
The officer wrote in the arrest report that Connor, who is not a student at the school, was walking down First Avenue looking around at the children, into the windows of buildings and fidgeting. When questioned, the officer said Connor gave conflicting answers, so the officer asked him to turn around and began to pat him down. The report said the officer immediately found a gun in his right jacket pocket. Connor was handcuffed and placed under arrest, reports News4Jax.
Conner, who was wearing a black jacket and had a ski mask with him, did not tell detectives why he was here, what he was planning to do or why he had the guns on him.
According to the report, the suspect had two guns on him, a 9mm Glock and a .45-caliber Sig-Sauer. The officer said the Glock had a magazine with eight rounds in it, but the magazine was not in the gun. The .45-caliber was loaded, with four bullets in the magazine.
“We did have everything in place and it worked the way that it should have,” Jacksonville Beach Police Chief Mark Evans said of his officers.
Evans said that Conner already has a long criminal history, with several felony arrests.
“I can tell you with him being a juvenile and having the history that he has, there’s a reason why he was there and there is a reason why he had to loaded guns with him,” Evans said. “But we don’t know what that reason is at this point.”
Conner was booked at the Duval County jail and transferred to a juvenile detention facility.
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Geo quick facts: Jacksonville Beach is a coastal resort city in Duval County, Florida, United States. It was incorporated on May 22, 1907, as Pablo Beach, and would later change its name to Jacksonville Beach in 1925. The city is part of group of communities collectively referred to as the Jacksonville Beaches – Wikipedia.