It was the first time a toy gun had been made in a private Catholic university classroom, and it would also be the last.
An engineering student in a class at Saint Louis University was only following the assignment when he made a realistic-looking toy gun model. The toy gun prompted a campus-wide lockdown and a hunt began for what people thought might be a shooting suspect.
Students in the Aerospace and Mechanical “Engineering Manufacturing Procedures” class had been assigned to build a toy rubber band gun. Campus authorities warned all students to shelter in place for hours Wednesday afternoon and evacuated a residence hall after reports of a man with a gun on campus and shots fired.
The problem apparently stemmed from the student openly carrying his toy gun across the campus to his residence hall. There’s no word on what prompted the reports of shots fired, since clearly a rubber band gun would not create a noise loud enough to be confused as a bullet.
Saint Louis University is now asking all of the students to bring the toy guns in closed containers to a university office Thursday, where they will be destroyed. As of this writing, no one at the university had been disciplined over the incident.
It is too early to say if anyone will be disciplined over the incident, university spokesman Jeff Fowler said.
Image of Saint Louis University from Google Street View.
