MIDVALE, Utah, Feb. 1, 2017 (Gephardt Daily) — A lockdown at Hillcrest High School and two nearby middle schools has been lifted Wednesday morning after unsubstantiated reports of gunshots fired, police said.
Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder stated that the incident appeared to be a hoax.
Winder said a call came in to dispatch just after 10 a.m. stating that someone was with a weapon inside Hillcrest High, at 7350 S. 900 East, essentially barricaded. That report prompted an immediate lockdown.
A second call then came in saying the caller was hearing shots being fired. However, Winder said police were already on site and didn’t hear shots being fired, so then they were unsure whether the incident was at Hillcrest or could possibly be at another nearby school. He said there were then a series of other phone calls, essentially re-iterating the second phone call, reportedly all from the same person.
Canyons School District said in a Facebook post that Midvale Middle and Crescent Elementary were placed on lockdown. As a precautionary measure, the following schools were also placed on shelter-in-place status: East Midvale Elementary, Midvalley Elementary, Midvale Elementary and Jordan Valley School. The district said this move was “at the request of police or as a security precaution.”
Just after 11 a.m., the district updated the incident status:
“Police have lifted the lockdown and shelter-in-place orders at all CSD schools after ruling out reports of threatened violence. Schools continue to operate as usual. Again, we want to assure you that all our students remained safe and secure throughout the lockdown. We thank law enforcement for taking swift action to investigate and rule out the threats.”
Winder said the caller “made very specific statements indicating that we had an ongoing situation, and really triggered a response that I’m very pleased with in terms of its efficacy, but one can understand the terror and the fear that this imparts on people and it’s really just tragic. The response was very good but these calls continued to come in to the point of actually saying there were shots fired.”
Winder said police will pursue the caller aggressively.
“We want people to know that it is, in fact, a crime,” he said. “We want people to know that whatever the motive is, it’s just immoral to do this kind of thing to this many people. It’s just more than we need. I just hope people understand the severity of this situation. We are going to follow up on it and ensure that this individual knows the severity.”
