Centralia Police Lieutenant Steve Whritenour says three schools in Centralia went on lockdown Thursday following two separate incidents that ended up being unfounded.
Centralia Junior High and BCMW Head Start in the former Field School Building went on lockdown around 11:40 Thursday morning after Centralia Police received a call from a residence in the 1200 block of South Lincoln that she saw a rifle sitting on her porch. When police arrived, there was no gun and no one around the porch. Whritenour says in an overabundance of caution, the Junior High which is three blocks away through a wooded area, and the Head Start building which is a little further away were placed on lockdown. Centralia Police searched the wooded area and around other area houses without finding anything. A neighbor who had watched police arrive at the home told them there had been no one else around the house. The lockdown was lifted about 45 minutes after it started.
Whritenour said the situation that led to the 20-minute lockdown at Centralia High School occurred after Centralia Police received a report of a male subject on the east side of the Casey’s Store on East McCord with a gun Thursday afternoon. He reports police arrived at the store about a minute later to learn that the clerk at Casey’s had received a phone call about 40 minutes earlier about a man reportedly with a gun. In the meantime, based on initial police radio traffic the School Resource Officer put the high school into soft lockdown and a school notification was sent out to parents. Once the full story was learned and because of the distance between Casey’s and the high school, the lockdown was lifted.
Whritenour notes with recent incidents at schools across the country they are moving more quickly to lock down schools as a precaution.
