On the last day of school, most high schoolers promptly return home before sundown and begin preparing for another year of rigorous academic study. However, this year, one West Seattle teen decided to mark the end of the school year with burning instead of learning.
At about 6:30 pm, officers were driving through Schmitz Park—expecting to find the park free of teenagers, who had presumably all gone home to continue their studies instead of heading to the park to deface things and consume alcohol—when they smelled smoke.
Officers then came across a pile of charred school papers, leaves and twigs, and saw a teenage boy running away up a nearby staircase.
Officers caught up to the 15-year-old boy, arrested him and searched his backpack, which contained marijuana cigarettes, brass knuckles, baggies of marijuana hidden inside deodorant containers, several strange yellow capsules a small scale and not a single text book.
Officers called the teen’s grandmother and booked the boy into the Youth Service Center for arson, drug possession, and a weapons violation.
It’s not clear whether this incident was related to another homework arson at a West Seattle school earlier in the day:
School’s out for summer. And officers are already looking for 3 kids who just set their homework on fire near California/SW Lander.
— Seattle Police Dept. (@SeattlePD) June 14, 2013
Our sketch artist has already put together a composite of the homework-burning suspects: pic.twitter.com/V7RhjjUd0H
— Seattle Police Dept. (@SeattlePD) June 14, 2013