EDUCATION + SCHOOLS
All-clear given at Lone Peak High School after possible “wrong school” threat
Oct 25, 2019, 3:09 PM | Updated: 6:54 pm
Photo: KSL TV Chopper 5
HIGHLAND, Utah — Students went on lockdown Friday at Lone Peak High School, prompted by a call to police reporting someone with a gun near the school. But it turns out, that caller may have had the school confused with a different location.
Videos recorded inside classrooms showed the chaotic scene as armed officers cleared the building.
A student at Lone Peak High School shared this video of what it was like inside classrooms during the lockdown earlier.
The good news: officers thoroughly checked the building, and all students are safe. pic.twitter.com/T3R2YKcr2Y
— KSL Newsradio (@kslnewsradio) October 25, 2019
Alpine School District spokeswoman Kimberly Bird told KSL that police first cleared a perimeter around the building, then searched room-by-room. Footage from KSL TV’s Chopper 5 showed SWAT officers searching the school’s roof.
Lone Peak went on lockdown just after noon when police were told about a possible gun on campus. Roughly 100 officers from several different agencies were sent to the school. After finding nothing, at first, they went class to class to see if anyone had seen anything suspicious.
After that, students say officers were planning on searching them, individually.
One student says, “They came back and said we were going to be escorted to the gym to be patted down and to check our bags.”
Students say they weren’t scared during lockdown, believing police had the situation well in hand.
“They took us down to the gym and we met some people who were already there. A couple of them had said they had been patted down and [police] searched their bags to see if they had a gun. Then, when we were in the gym, they announced that it was all clear,” she says.
Parents waited across the street in a Walmart parking lot, not knowing what to think.
One mother says, “Yeah, it’s kind of scary, but, you never know.”
By 2:15 p.m., students were released. Police found no weapons. No one was hurt, and there were no reports of shots fired.
Bird said police determined the report was not credible and may have been a reference to a different school.
Bird says, “That’s when we became aware that, oops, they gave the wrong information to the police.”
WRONG SCHOOL. Lone Peak Police say a third-party tipster sent in a tip about someone with a weapon in “the high school in Highland,” when they really meant Highland High School. But, SLCPD says nothing happened at Highland High School. pic.twitter.com/uASRO2YoO9
— Paul Nelson (@KSLPaul) October 25, 2019
Investigators say someone reported seeing a suspicious person inside Highland High School in Salt Lake City. (More about him later.) That tipster reportedly told someone else who, in turn, called the Lone Peak Police Department. Officer Dave Ventrano says that third-party tipster got their information wrong.
“The person they told it to that called us thought it was ‘the high school in Highland,’” which is Lone Peak High School, says Ventrano.
The “suspicious person” inside Highland High turned out to be a vending machine worker.
According to Bird, about 2,500 students attend Lone Peak High School. A football game against Riverton High School will go on as planned in Riverton tonight.
(Contributing: Paul Nelson)
