Student brings baggies of heroin to elementary school

As police investigate the source of bags of heroin that were brought to a Kensington elementary school by a first-grader, parents hope the school will prevent further incidents from happening.

It’s not the first time drugs have been brought on campus, said Lamar Ragland, 30, the father of a 4th-grader at William Cramp Elementary School. In 2013, another student brought crack-cocaine to the same school, located on the 3400 block of North Mascher Street in Kensington.

Ragland claimed that incident “was swept under the rug by the school.”

But Philadelphia School District spokesman Fernando Gallard denied that, saying the previous incident at Cramp was referred to police, the Department of Human Services, and that parents were notified.

In the latest incident Tuesday, 15 plastic baggies of heroin were found in the school, according to police.

Multiple students brought the bags to teachers.

The teachers were transported to the Special Victims Unit for interviews, and the kids were brought to St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children for evaluations, police said.

No arrests were reported and police had not confirmed the origin of the drugs as of Wednesday afternoon, a police spokeswoman said.

“I believe that what’s going on is it’s out in the open in the homes. They just have free access to it,” Ragland said. “As kids you pick up something and just take it with you, without knowing what it is, but it becomes a danger, because what if one of them were to actually put in their system?”

Ragland was disturbed that his daughter was exposed to heroin, he said.

“I would like for it to be safer,” Ragland told Metro. “Don’t attempt to sweep it under the rug. Let the parents know so we can all work together so we can prevent things like this. At the end of the day we all need to protect our children.”