Appetite For Detention

My story in today's paper got a lot of play on the wires, making it all the way to Austria. No comment yet from Axl.

ROXBURY — A Booth Free School teacher barri­caded herself in a classroom Wednesday when she mis­took someone singing a Guns N’ Roses song over the pub­lic address system for a threat. State police detained three teenagers temporarily until an investigation at the scene cleared up the misunder­standing.

The teacher, whom police did not name, called 911 at about 5:45 p.m. when she heard someone over the school’s public address sys­tem say that she was going to die. She believed no one else was supposed to be inside the school, police said.

A police dispatcher called for all available troopers to re­spond, drawing about six troop­ers and three police dogs to the school at 14 South St. When the police arrived, they discovered three teenagers, one of them a custodian at the school. The police did not re­lease their names.

The teenagers had been playing with the public ad­dress system, police said, and one of them sang “Welcome to the Jungle” by rock group Guns N’ Roses into the micro­phone. The song contains the lyrics “You’re in the jungle baby; you’re gonna die.”

Police cuffed the teenagers on the ground in front of the school for about 15 minutes while checking the school and speak­ing to the teacher. Dogs barked inside police SUVs. Police brought the teenagers back into the school, questioned them and released them by 6:45 p.m.

“There won’t be any criminal charges,” said Sgt. Brian Van Ness of state police at Troop A in Southbury. “We contacted the principal, and the adminis­tration will handle it internal­ly.”

Van Ness said the three teenagers did not know the teacher was in the school.

“These things happen,” Van Ness said. “Luckily it was hu­morous. You kind of have a gut feeling. As soon as we got there, we spoke to the three kids. They understood.”