Kalamazoo Central gun case: police report and KPS disagree on whether the weapon detectors went off; safety meeting Oct. 28

KALAMAZOO, Mich. — A police report and Kalamazoo Public Schools give conflicting accounts of how a 16-year-old got a loaded handgun past the weapon detectors at Kalamazoo Central High School on Oct. 16, and the district has scheduled a public safety meeting for Wednesday, Oct. 28.

The student told a Kalamazoo Township police officer that he walked in “the normal way” through the detectors, that they went off and that he was searched but the gun was not found, according to the redacted 10-page report, which WWMT-TV and WMUK obtained. The report records what the student said; it does not establish that an alert or a search happened.

The district disputes that. “Video evidence indicates that when the student entered the school, the weapon detection system did not alert; thus, a secondary search was not conducted,” KPS said in a statement Tuesday, as quoted by both outlets. Superintendent Darrin Slade said “a student’s interview with law enforcement is simply an interview.” WWMT said it has filed a records request for the video, which the district had not shared.

How the gun was found. A parent of a Hillside Middle School student tipped off school leaders around 9:30 a.m. that a K-Central student might have a gun, according to the report as described by WWMT. Officers pulled the student from class. One officer searched the backpack twice and found the gun in a concealed rear pocket only after a second officer felt it through the fabric. The gun held a five-round magazine with no round in the chamber. The student said he found it that morning and carried it “to protect himself from the streets.” Its registered owner had died, the report says.

KPS campus safety chief Donald Webster later put the gun back in the backpack and walked it through a detector, which went off, the report says, but the officer noted the student’s Chromebook and notebooks were not in the bag for that test. Police planned to seek charges including carrying a concealed weapon in a school zone and possessing a stolen firearm; WWMT said it could not confirm what has been filed in juvenile court. The Mitten Daily is not naming the student, a minor.

Why it matters to taxpayers. KPS put the detectors in its secondary schools in 2025 with about $300,000 in state grant money, WWMT reported, and calls them one layer of its safety plan. Either account raises a question the district should answer: whether the system missed a loaded handgun, or whether an alert was followed by a search that missed it.

What parents can do. The safety meeting is at 5 p.m. Oct. 28 in the Kalamazoo Central auditorium. The district and police both credit a student who told an adult. If your child hears of a weapon, report it right away to a staff member, police or Michigan’s confidential OK2SAY line.

For more from the city, see our Kalamazoo page.

Sources:
WWMT-TV, “Report details when a student brought a loaded gun into Kalamazoo Central High School,” Oct. 21, 2026, updated 7:24 p.m. (police report contents, KPS statement, grant funding, meeting), https://wwmt.com/news/local/ten-page-report-student-loaded-gun-kalamazoo-central-high-school-township-police-prosecutors-susan-coney-darrin-slade-don-webster-conflicting
WMUK, “KPS says Kalamazoo Central's weapon detectors did not detect firearm brought by student,” Oct. 21, 2026, https://www.wmuk.org/wmuk-news/2026-10-21/kps-says-kalamazoo-centrals-weapon-detectors-did-not-detect-firearm-brought-by-student
Michigan State Police, OK2SAY, https://www.michigan.gov/ok2say
Photo: PQ77wd, “Walk-through metal detectors in an office building.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), cropped and color-adjusted, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Walk-through_metal_detectors_in_an_office_building.jpg

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Tags: Kalamazoo · Kalamazoo Public Schools · School Safety · Weapon Detectors · Public Safety · Schools