UNION, WV (WVNS) — A dinner was held on Tuesday, February 7th honoring the James Monroe High School students who helped to stop a potential tragedy.

On January 19th, James Monroe High School and the neighboring Monroe County Technical Center went into lockdown after a student brought a gun onto campus.

During shop class in the technical center, fellow classmates noticed a student had a gun tucked into their waistband.

Once the student left the classroom, the rest of the students went out a back exit and alerted teachers of the situation.

Within minutes of teachers being alerted, police had taken the student into custody and recovered the weapon.

Those students and their families enjoyed a dinner in their honor at the Monroe County Board of Education in Union.

One of the students, Braydie Carr, said he and his fellow students are glad the situation ended without anyone getting hurt.

“Let me put it this way, when it happened, I think all of us were thinking, man we should have tackled them then and there,” said Carr. “Because we were like, if someone does end up getting hurt, how are we going to live with ourselves, the fact that we could have prevented that? It was such a big relief, I think on all of us, it was a weight that dropped off all of our shoulders who were there and saw it, that knew no one got hurt.”

According to West Virginia State Police Sergeant Scott Keaton, Carr and his fellow classmates stopped an unimaginable tragedy from occurring.

“I don’t have to look at Deputy Heller to tell you, and I already said, there was ill intent,” said Keaton. “It wasn’t just an accidental, bringing that firearm to school that day. And there could have been severe causalities. We could have had another Columbine.”

While Carr said it was awkward to go back to shop class in the days following the incident, he says it is not worth dwelling on the past and it’s important to be glad nothing bad happened

“I don’t think there’s too too much worry, but then again you never really know. I still feel very safe in my school environment. I don’t, I don’t really worry about those tiny things, plus if you always try to think about what could happen, you’ll never get anything done so I guess it’s good to stay optimistic.”