PROSSER -- A novelty cigarette lighter shaped like a gun sent Prosser High School into a lockdown and brought out police Friday morning.

Taking it for a real gun, school staff put the school in a 25-minute lockdown at 10 a.m. after receiving a tip from a student, said Principal Kevin Lusk.

Some of the students were evacuated from the area where the suspected gun was, he said.

Prosser police took the student from a classroom into custody to the police station. That's when they learned the suspected gun was only a lighter, Lusk said, adding that the student did not intend the incident as prank.

However, the boy was sent home from the school as an "emergency expulsion," while administrators decide what, if any, discipline is warranted.