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Two youths will be charged this evening with one count each of second-degree assault and theft under $400 following a fight at Richard Montgomery High School that sent one student to the hospital and led to the school being put on lockdown for more than an hour today.

Rockville City Police Lt. Alan Rawlins said the boys, one 16 and one 17, are being taken to the Alfred D. Noyes Detention Center in Rockville tonight.

Rawlins said the two stole an iPod from a third student during a lunchtime fight.

Rumors that one of the students might have had a gun forced the lockdown, a school system spokesman said. However, no weapons were found.

The school system had not made any determinations on suspensions or expulsions as of early this evening, Montgomery County Public Schools spokesman Dana Tofig said. That will be determined after the facts of the case are examined, he said.

Tofig did not know the grade of the students involved.

Neither police nor the school system would say whether the fight was gang-related.

More than 20 police units arrived at the school, which is located one block off Rockville Pike near downtown Rockville, around 12:45 p.m. after the rumor about the gun began to circulate.

Rockville City Police Maj. Robert Rappoport said the fight happened on a footpath between Fleet Street and Mount Vernon Place, located just off school property, as some students were returning to the building after eating lunch off-campus.

Several students witnessed the fight and one may have said or overheard something about a gun as they were fleeing from the altercation, Rappoport said.

"There was a rumor there may have been a gun involved," he said. "Someone may have said, ‘Let's get out of here before [there are] shots fired.'"

The school was put on lockdown after the rumors began circulating. During a lockdown, also referred to as a Code Red, students return to their classrooms and the doors are locked until the alert is lifted, Tofig said.

The victim returned home after the fight and went to a local hospital for treatment of minor injuries, Rappoport said. The other two students involved in the fight returned to school.

Several lockers were searched for weapons, but none was found, he said.

It is unclear if any of the three will be back in class on Monday since that depends on the outcome of the investigation, Tofig said.

When school let out at 2:10 p.m., the lockdown had been lifted but the rumors of a gun in the school were still running rampant, according to students.

Glenda Johnson, who has two daughters and a sister at the school, said she received text messages saying, "Some guy brought some narcotics and a gun in the school."

After she got the text from her sister, she immediately logged on to the social networking Web site Facebook to see what other parents had heard about the incident.

Student accounts about what happened varied widely and most said they used text messages to spread the news.

Staff Writers Nesa Nourmohammadi, Marcus Moore and Mimi Liu contributed to this report.