Boardman student pleads guilty to gun charge

Staff report

BOARDMAN

A 19-year-old Boardman High School student pleaded guilty Tuesday to a charge of possessing a deadly weapon in a school safety zone.

William J. Ritchey III of Boardman originally faced a felony charge, but pleaded to a reduced misdemeanor charge. Ritchey was accused of bringing a .38-caliber revolver to school Jan. 27 and was arrested after a student reported seeing him in school with a gun.

A school security officer searched Ritchey and found an unloaded gun tucked inside his right pant leg near his ankle but no ammunition, police said.

Ritchey was sentenced to pay a $200 fine, was placed on house arrest, had his license suspended and placed on probation for one year, court records show.

Boardman police Sgt. Chuck Hillman, Boardman’s school police officer, said this is the second time in 10 years a gun has been found on school grounds. The other time, a gun was found in a student’s car in the school parking lot, he said.

“It is rare, but it is obviously something serious when something like that does happen,” Hillman said.

The most recent incident was almost exactly one year after about 300 students were absent from Boardman High School because of rumors of violence.

About 300 of the building’s 1,600 students were absent Jan. 18, 2011, because of threats found on a wall of a boys restroom stall that led to rumors of a student planning to bring a gun to school after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, according to Vindicator files. No reports of weapons or violence occurred that day.