After chasing a group of four students on Jan. 11, security caught two freshmen from Lincoln High School, who were then detained by the police for trespassing.

The students were making noise and trespassing on campus on the first floor of the science wing, when a janitor called security. “They were being really loud and chasing each other in the hallways,” custodian Kenneth “Kenny” Tsui said. “When a student here does something not allowed in the hallway and you tell them to stop, they usually stop and apologize because they don’t want to cause trouble. I thought they were outsiders, so I called security to investigate.”

Their presence in the school was taken seriously by security. “When outside students can walk around in the science wing, they are physically dangerous to Lowell students,” security officer James Yu said. The technology equipment in the science wing also poses a potential reason to apprehend trespassers quickly. “Since they’re in the science wing, I think they are after the computers, laptops and other equipment,” Yu added.

After the janitor told the students to stop running, the students fled the school with security on their tail, according to dean Ray Cordoba. “That’s when the game of cat-and-mouse started,” he said. As school staff were tracking the students around the neighborhood, they split up and two of the four were caught. One was caught near Ocean Avenue at 25th Avenue, and one was caught near Middlefield Avenue and Ocean Avenue, according to Davis.

During the 45-minute chase, security made use of the golf cart and assistant principal of administration Michael Yi’s car. “Without the cart, none of the students would have been caught,” Yu said.

Administrators were instrumental in helping security catch the students. “One was caught by me and Sierra Two, [the walkie-talkie codename of Yu] and the other was caught by Ishibashi and Yi,” Davis said.

As soon as the administration was alerted, the police were called, and the officers arrived and detained the students five to 10 minutes later. “The students were detained for trespassing, and the police might want to do some investigation to see if the students were connected to a car vandalism,” Yi said.

The Lincoln students’ reasons for being at Lowell are unknown, though they may have been meeting up with friends, according to Davis. “They told the police they used to go to school with students here, but they wouldn’t say who,” she said.

A teacher had sighted the students loitering around the school on Nov. 18, the day when SDC-LP teacher Claire Puretz’s car was broken into and several more times since December, according to Davis. “We have seen this group of outside students hanging around at around 3 p.m. before,” she said. “There used to be three that we noticed hanging around, but now there are five total.”

However, there is no evidence that the detained students were responsible for the car vandalism. “I don’t believe they’re the ones who broke the window during the rally,” Davis said. “They have been hanging around causing trouble, but there are lots of other people that are causing trouble in that parking lot.”

The Lincoln administration has taken punitive action against the students, since the police discovered the identities of all four students from the two that were caught. Lincoln and Lowell have worked together on the case, so Lincoln staff sent Cordoba a follow-up letter on Jan. 24. “I received a copy of a letter admonishing the four students,” Cordoba said. “That is the last official warning that they will receive, and if it happens again, they will be arrested and/or fined.”

A version of this article first appeared in the Jan. 27, 2012 print edition of The Lowell.