MANCHESTER, Tenn. – Officials at a Tennessee middle school are apologizing to parents after they searched a student suspected of bringing a gun to school, then released him to class with the weapon still up his sleeve.

The Westwood Middle School student, whose identity was not revealed, allegedly brought a gun to school last Thursday, along with a loaded magazine in his backpack. School officials learned about the alleged weapon and searched the student in the school office, then released him back to class when they did not find the gun, WSMV reports.

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Manchester Police later learned that the student stashed the gun up his sleeve as school officials searched his backpack, which contained a magazine loaded with six rounds. The school was never placed on a lockdown, and officials did not recover the gun until the end of the school day.

“A letter sent home to parents and to the media by the school system was sent out the following day, and mentioned only an ‘unloaded’ firearm,” The Tullahoma News reports.

“The (situation) was not handled well,” Manchester City Schools Director Lee Wilkerson told dozens of parents who gathered for a meeting this week to discuss the case. “We’re very fortunate that it didn’t lead to some type of injury.”

Wilkerson and police who also attended the meeting stressed that they don’t believe the student intended to harm anyone with the weapon.

“The first thing we could have done better was notified the police when there was suspicion of a weapon on campus,” said Director of Schools Lee Wilkerson. “We had an apparent delay in the notification as well, so those are the two things we could do better.”

Parent Lisa Gilmore said she “actually felt sick, physically sick” when she learned the details of how the situation was handled.

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“There might not have been any intent, but there could have been an accident,” she said. “There could have been a bullet in a chamber, and he takes it off to show it off; and some mother, some father has lost a child.”

“It scared me,” parent Bradley Ramsey told WSMV. “I was sick to my stomach.”

Wilkerson told parents he plans to use text alerts in the future to notify them of perceived threats. School officials revised the district’s safety plan for suspected firearms, he said, and will re-train staff members on the changes.

He said the school will now implement a lockdown during suspicious activities or possible threats. The district also purchased metal detector wands to scan students, if necessary, he said.

Wilkerson would not discuss how the student with the gun was punished, but noted that state law requires a minimum of a one-year suspension.

He acknowledged that he was not aware of the situation until after police had already questioned the student at the school. Several parents questioned how the improved alert system would work if Wilkerson is left out of the loop.

“By the time you found out about it, everything had pretty much been handled, so for you to be in charge of the (text alerts) and making sure that is carried out properly, you can’t do that if you’re not notified properly,” parent Kellie Lawrence said.

Others called on the school district to employ a student resource officer at the middle school, including school board member Susan Parsley.

“I’m a board member but first I am a parent,” she said. “The years I’ve been on the board, I’ve been 100 percent for getting an SRO officer in the school. The only way you can face a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun. We don’t live in the same world we used to live in.”