ROME TOWNSHIP— The Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office is investigating an incident today at Fairland Elementary involving an eight-year-old boy and a toy gun.

Sheriff Jeff Lawless said that, as the children were boarding buses to go home this afternoon, one child noticed what appeared to be a gun in the backpack of third grader and alerted the bus driver, who removed the child from the bus and called the sheriff’s office.

Lawless said the gun turned out to be an air-soft BB gun, a type of gun that shoots plastic as opposed to metal BBs.

“These guns can sometimes look real,” Lawless said.

Lawless said, although his deputies are looking into the incident, at this time they believe the child did not intend to hurt anyone and that he just brought a toy to school, unaware of the consequences of his actions. However, any discussion of weapons and schools merits close inspection.

“We do take these things very seriously,” Lawless said. “Our concern is for the safety of all the students.”

No one was injured in the incident. The child’s parents were called to pickup the student and Lawless said they seemed shocked at what had happened.