SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Aug. 28, 2019 (Gephardt Daily) — One person is in custody after West High School in Salt Lake City was briefly placed on a lockdown Wednesday afternoon.
“West High is in LOCKDOWN after a student reporting seeing another juvenile with a gun,” said a Facebook post from the Salt Lake City School District at 12:50 p.m. “We are working diligently with the police to investigate the situation. We’ll keep you updated as we learn more information.”
Just minutes after, the Salt Lake City Police Department tweeted: “Incident at West High is contained. One person in custody. No further danger to students or public.”
Salt Lake City police spokesman Detective Michael Ruff said a gun was recovered on a juvenile inside the school, it’s not clear if that person was a student. Charges will be pending, he added.
Ruff said that a call reporting the incident came in to officials sometime after noon. A student had seen another juvenile drop a gun and then retrieve it; that was then reported to school officials, who reported it to police.
“We were able to trace back that actually the report of this person dropping this weapon had been seen about three hours prior,” he said. “So we appreciate the person that came forward, it’s very important that if you do see something to come forward, we would always hope that that occurs very quickly. In this case it was about a three-hour time lapse so we were glad that we were still about to locate that person and that nothing had happened, and we were able to safely take them into custody.”
A lockdown status is called when there is a threat or hazard inside the school building, officials said.
Ruff added: “If you see something that seems abnormal, somebody with a weapon, somebody that seems out of place, we would always appreciate people calling us, we’re happy to come and investigate that even if it seems somewhat innocuous to you.
Gephardt Daily will have more on this developing story as information is made available.
