Student Arrested After Police Find AK-47 In Car

Cocoa police found an AK-47 assault rifle and ammunition on a high school campus Wednesday in Brevard County. The gun was in a car parked at Cocoa High School. Police arrested a 17-year-old student who they say brought the weapon on campus.

Initially, police went to the teen’s car looking for drugs but didn’t find any. Officers, however, said they could smell marijuana in the car and then found an assault rifle and two magazines with .762 rounds in them, enough to take out an entire classroom.

Police say 17-year-old Gary Ritchie-Sheffield brought the assault rifle to Cocoa High School. Officers say the school received a tip that the student had drugs on Tuesday, but Ritchie-Sheffield didn't show up for class. When he went to school on Wednesday, police searched him and his car and found the rifle in the trunk and thirty rounds of ammunition in a passenger compartment.

SLIDESHOW: Images Of Rifle, Teen

“The bullets that he was carrying are high-velocity bullets, certainly could have caused a lot of problems," Officer Barbara Matthews of the Cocoa Police Department said. ak-45 assault rifle 010610

Officers said there was no explanation why Gary Ritchie-Sheffield brought the rifle to campus.

"There doesn't seem to be any indication that he was going to load the weapon and take it into the school," Matthews said.

But some parents were left speechless by the discovery.

"I don't know what to think about it, who knows?" parent Holly Bell asked.

The teenager's neighbor said, of all the kids in his neighborhood Ritchie-Sheffield was the last he would think to bring an assault rifle to school.

"Do you know why he would have an AK-47 in his car?” WFTV reporter Kevin Oliver asked.

“Now that I'm shocked to hear about it, it's news to me," neighbor Henry Jones said.

Police are not sure where the gun or the ammo came from and it's not registered as stolen.

Not only is the teenager facing automatic expulsion from school, he is headed to juvenile detention center to face felony weapons charges. The district has a zero-tolerance policy for weapons on campus.

Richie-Sheffield was arrested on charges of possession of a firearm on school property, disruption of a school function and possession of a firearm by a minor.

Eyewitness News found out that as far as anyone can tell the teen has no criminal record and did not make any threats.