Counselor At SB Combination Elementary & Middle School With Gun In Car Arrested

The student counselor at Paakuma School in the San Bernardino City Unified School District arrested this week for having a gun in her vehicle was delivered up to the authorities by a fellow faculty member, the Sentinel has learned.
Anita Rene Scott had worked for the district since 2001. She was a student resource counselor at Paakuma, the district’s newest campus, which opened in 2015 as the only school in the district that is a combination elementary and middle school, with kindergarten through eighth grade classrooms.
Sometime after the beginning of the school year last month, Scott, 55, had engaged in a discussion with her colleagues in which the topics of violence, security and self-protection came up. At some point, Scott confided that she had a firearm for personal protection and that she kept it in her vehicle.
Scott does not have a concealed weapons permit. The gun, however, was registered to her.
One of her colleagues informed school district police of Scott’s claim that she had a gun and that it was in her vehicle. School district police obtained a search warrant, and on Monday morning accessed her vehicle, which was in the school parking lot, and found the gun.
It is illegal to have a firearm on a school campus in California. Scott was arrested and transported to West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga, where she was booked on suspicion of bringing a firearm to a school. Early Tuesday she posted $25,000 bail, and was released. By that point, the district had placed her on administrative leave.
According to San Bernardino City Unified School District Police Chief Joseph Paulino, there is nothing to indicate Scott ever took the gun out of her vehicle. The vehicle was locked at the time the search was carried out. Paulino said Scott had never made a threat to use the weapon. “We don’t believe [Scott] is a threat to the campus,” Paulino said.

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