72-year-old man shows up at school dance with gun because music was too loud, say cops
Police in Thatcher, Arizona say a 72-year-old man who showed up at an outdoor high school dance Friday night with a gun didn’t intend to harm anyone, but he was allegedly upset about the loud music.
They credited the DJ with preventing the incident from escalating.
The dance took place in the parking lot of Thatcher High School, according to the Arizona Republic.
The school was celebrating the football team’s Friday night win, according to the Gila Herald and other local media. The Herald reported that about 150 students were there at the time.
The call came into police as a man with a handgun creating a disturbance at the high school, according to a press release from the Thatcher police department.
Police Chief Shaffen Woods said in the release that Robert Layton showed up at the dance about 11:45 p.m.
“Layton was reportedly upset about the loud music and made statements about shutting the music down during the incident,” police said in the release.
According to KPNX in Phoenix, Layton first talked to the DJ, who told him to talk to the principal, Jeffrey Lords. The principal told police that an angry Layton grabbed him by his shirt, the TV station reported.
At some point Layton reportedly started waving a gun, which police say he never took out of a nylon holster, according to KPNX.
Then Layton allegedly tried to pull wires out of DJ Bryson Wren’s equipment, according to the Herald, which led to a scuffle between the two men. The DJ pushed Layton to the ground and was able to hold him there until police arrived, the newspaper reported.
Kade Nelson, 15, who plays junior varsity football at the school, told the Eastern Arizona Courier he saw a man grab the principal’s shirt and pull him aside.
“You could tell he was pretty angry about something and he was like yelling at the principal over the music so I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he was pretty fired up about something and the principal was just sitting there kind of listening,” Kade told the newspaper, which reported that the DJ declined to talk about the incident.
He said he saw the man “pull out something black” that looked gun-shaped but he couldn’t tell what it was.
He told the Courier that the DJ pushed him to the ground when the man bent over some cords and looked like he was going to pull on them.
“And the DJ was holding him down saying, ‘Do not touch the gun,’ and making sure he didn’t get the gun. And then most of us in the front heard him shout and everybody started to go, and I started to go too,” Kade told the newspaper.
Students rushed to leave the area when they heard there was a gun and some hid in a nearby cotton field, the Herald reported.
KPNX reported that police found that the 9 mm handgun Layton waved had a loaded magazine but no round in the chamber.
Layton was taken to Mt. Graham Regional Medical Center because he said he was injured during the incident, according to police.
He faces several charges including disorderly conduct with a deadly weapon and aggravated assault, the Herald reported.
“At this time we do not have any information that would lead us to believe Layton went to the school with the intention of harming any students,” Woods said in a statement to KPNX.
The police department hailed the DJ’s actions.
“Bryson Wren did an outstanding job of containing this subject and deprived Layton of any opportunities to use the weapon, if he had decided to do so,” Woods said in a statement to the media.
“Wren’s quick thinking and courageous actions were essential to the safety of everyone involved in this incident. I am extremely proud and grateful for the actions of both Bryson Wren and Mr. Jeffery Lords, who without a doubt placed themselves in harms way during this incident to ensure the safety of students at Thatcher High School.”
High school officials wrote about the incident on its website, saying that “we know this was traumatic for some of our students and staff,” and arranged to have the school district’s counselor at the high school on Saturday to help anyone who needed it.