BATON ROUGE - The Howell Community Park pool will remain closed for the remainder of the year. 

Officials announced the decision during a community meeting Monday night. It comes after four juveniles between the ages of eight and 12 jumped over the fence with handguns on July 20.

"As a result of that all of our lifeguards bailed and said that we are not going to come back up here again because we are in fear of the safety of our body," BREC Interim Superintendent Janet Simmons said.  

Simmons says safety is the first priority for staff and visitors. 

"It would make it a lot easier for us to work with this if they didn't have handguns, but the safety of our employees comes first and so we are not going to allow that to happen with children holding handguns and we have no idea if they were loaded or not loaded. They were large guns, in fact, half the size of the children," she said. 

Not everyone in attendance was happy about the pool's closure. 

Tebbe Jackson, an avid swimmer, presented a petition to reverse the decision to BREC Interim Chief Operating Officer Maurice Velasquez and other top BREC officials.  

"We had about 100 signatures, I also started an online petition and I haven't checked with that, but I've been in contact with Mr. Velasquez, I plan on bringing him those signatures," Jackson said.