Cook Elementary school resource officer arrested in Lafayette County drug case

Cook Elementary’s school safety officer, Bryan Holliness, 39, was arrested Monday in Lafayette County on drug distribution charges and booked into the Lafayette County Jail that afternoon by the U.S. Marshals Service. The arrest puts a campus security post under scrutiny at a Columbus school that serves young children and relies on visible adult protection during the day.

Holliness is listed on Cook Elementary’s staff directory as the school’s School Resource Officer and School Safety Officer. That public listing makes the case especially sensitive for Lafayette County families, because the arrest involves a person assigned to help protect students on campus.

The Columbus Municipal School District said it was aware of Holliness’s arrest and had opened an internal investigation under its employee handbook. Superintendent Craig Chapman said the district was working closely with law enforcement to gather more information. Officials had not publicly released additional details about the alleged offense, and Scott Leary, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi, said he could not comment further because it was early in the investigation.

The district did not initially name Holliness in its statement, citing the internal review. Even so, the Cook Elementary staff directory still identified him as the school’s safety officer, leaving questions for parents and school staff about how the role will be handled while the investigation continues. No public statement has detailed any staffing change at the school.

The arrest also comes amid sustained drug enforcement activity in Lafayette County and across the Northern District of Mississippi. County authorities carried out a separate 2025 roundup that led to 42 arrests on drug charges, and a federal operation in April 2026 resulted in 20 Mississippi and Tennessee defendants being arrested in a drug trafficking conspiracy case. For Columbus schools, though, the immediate issue is narrower and more urgent: the district must account for a security role tied directly to student safety while the criminal case and internal review move forward.