Anne Arundel County Police are investigating what officials described as an accidental gun discharge in a Glen Burnie elementary school classroom on Wednesday.

About 15 children were in a second grade classroom at Freetown Elementary School when one of them was thought to have accidentally fired a gun, officials said. The shooting happened around 8:30 a.m., just as school was getting started.

One boy injured his hand when the discharge occurred, said Marc Limansky, a spokesperson for the county police. No one else was injured.

Officials said the student’s teacher immediately secured the weapon and gave aid to the child before he could be taken to the nurse’s office. Anne Arundel County firefighters arrived at the school and took the 7-year-old boy to a hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries, according to a department spokesperson.

“We’re just very grateful that, you know, this incident didn’t evolve into something even worse,” said Anne Arundel County Police Chief Amal E. Awad. “We know that bullets don’t discriminate.”

Freetown Elementary School was on hold this morning during the incident, meaning students and staff were not allowed to leave the building, said Maneka Monk, director of communications for Anne Arundel County Public Schools.

The school sent out a message to families about the incident around 10:15 a.m., Monk said. All students were dismissed around 11 a.m., either picked up by parents or transported home on normal bus routes. Officials said police arrived on the scene by 8:36 a.m., about a six-minute response time.

Superintendent Mark Bedell said during an update outside the school that classes would resume as normal on Thursday. School staff did a “phenomenal” job, he said.

“I’m a parent in this school district, too, and I can assure you that my reaction would have been exactly what these parents were, filled with a boatload of fear,” Bedell said. “But these parents came and they worked with us. They operated with grace and patience.”

Capt. Jacklyn Davis, who oversees the Northern District Police Station for the Anne Arundel County Police Department, reiterated that the investigation is ongoing, including determining where the child was able to find a gun.

Her plea, Davis said, “parent to parent,” was for people to not buy into rumors or react to unverified information. “Have trust in us that we will get to the bottom of this, of where this child got this gun,” she said.

This is a developing story.