Source: Man arrested for having AR-15 on campus of Charlotte middle school

CHARLOTTE — A source told Channel 9 someone walking into a Charlotte-Mecklenburg middle school Monday afternoon saw a man sitting in the parking lot with a semiautomatic rifle.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police found a man with an AR-15 sitting in the passenger seat of his car outside Sedgefield Middle School at 1 p.m., a police source told Channel 9.

Someone in the front office alerted the school resource officer, who called CMPD out to the scene.

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The source said Aladdin Brown, 27, told the officer he had dropped off his girlfriend to do some work at the school. He said he had the rifle for protection and didn’t know it was against the law.

The source said police issued a warrant for Brown’s arrest, charging him with having a weapon on school property. On Wednesday, he was arrested in Robeson County where he lives.

Yet another gun on a school campus, this one an assault-style rifle, is chilling news to Charlotte residents.

Lucille Puckett has been outspoken about guns in schools since police found three guns on the very first day of classes at West Charlotte High School, where her granddaughter is a student.

“Common sense should say, don’t,” said Puckett. “Especially when you’re talking about a large assault rifle.”

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Since then, violence has hit many schools in CMS and police have now found at least 15 guns, including two after a fight in the hallway at Hopewell High School.

Schools and community leaders have made pleas and are looking for ways to curb the violence and the guns. Puckett would like to see volunteers going into schools to watch and listen to students, and find out what’s really going on before it’s too late.

“They are crying for help,” Puckett said. “For an adult or someone to be there, that would be good intervention, that would be the help that some of these young people need.”

Channel 9 reached out to CMS, who said parents were not alerted to the incident here on Monday. They said they were aware of the incident but can’t comment because it’s an ongoing investigation.

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