As a precaution, two nearby schools — Hoover High and Keppel Elementary — were also put on lockdown. Keppel is adjacent to Toll while Hoover is across the street from the two.
The drama began to unfold Friday when a girl at Toll Middle School noticed what appeared to be a handgun in another student's backpack after that student cut in front of her in a lunch line, said Greg Franklin, assistant superintendent, educational services.
The girl told a friend about the gun and the friend told school Principal Jan Canfield, he said.
Nearly 4,000 students at the three schools were kept behind classroom doors as Glendale Police units — including SWAT and K-9 teams — quickly descended on the school sites as they searched for a student armed with a handgun.
Police blocked off the streets surrounding the three schools, hampering thousands of parents and siblings who showed up to pick up their children after class dismissal.
The boy allegedly carrying the gun was later found inside a room at Toll, police said. After being detained by police, he was taken to Eastlake Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles.
The boy allegedly lied to police as they were searching on campus, which is the cause for the charge filed Wednesday in Pasadena Juvenile Court, Robison said.
But the district attorney's office did not file a charge on the airsoft gun because it is not against the law to bring them on school grounds, she said.
Airsoft guns are spring- or gas-powered scale models of real firearms. They expel nonmetallic pellets.
Metallic pellet ammunition is against the law in the penal code, but the hard plastic- or rubber-made pellets of airsoft guns are not, Glendale Police Officer John Balian.
