While burning your homework on the last day of school is certainly a strong symbolic gesture of passage into the care-free summer months, it’s also considered arson by Seattle Police.
From the files of “those darn kids,” Seattle Police investigated two homework burning incidents on the last day of school, June 14, and one of them resulted in the arrest of a minor for possession of drugs and weapons and a separate charge for arson.
The first incident didn’t result in any arrests, but it did result in a few chuckles as Seattle Police searched for three kids near the intersection of California Ave. S.W. and S.W. Lander. Police, from their Twitter account, joked that their sketch artist already had a composite sketch ready for their suspects. In actuality, it was a screenshot of Beavis and Butt-head, characters from the MTV cartoon of the same name.
In the second event, police were driving through Schmitz Park around 6:30 p.m. on June 14 when they smelled smoke, according to SPD.
“Officers then came across a pile of charred school papers, leaves and twigs, and saw a teenage boy running away up a nearby staircase,” SPD’s Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote.
Officers caught up with the teen and upon searching his backpack, found marijuana cigarettes, baggies of marijuana hidden in a deodorant container, brass knuckles and “several strange yellow capsules and a small scale.”
The teen was booked into the Youth Service Center for arson, drug possession and a weapons violations. Officers called his grandmother with the news.