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Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Schools briefly locked down Wednesday
DAVENPORT — A 911 threat of an unhappy community member entering local schools with an AK-47 was quickly deemed to be a hoax Wednesday, May 10.
Sheriff Gabe Gants said the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office 911 dispatch received a call around 11:20 a.m. from a man who said he “moved here recently” and “hasn’t been treated well.”
“So he was upset with that and (said he) was going to take an AK-47 to school, and there were gunshots in the background of the call,” Gants said.
Police quickly responded to the two school campuses and locked them down while conferring with district administration about next steps, but school officials soon received a call from ESD101 saying the threats were made to other districts around Eastern Washington and were believed to be hoaxes, Gants said.
A review of the 911 call showed that the gunshots were likely recorded from a movie or other medium and weren’t live shots, he added.
“You could just tell it sounded like it was from a movie or something,” he said.
School officials and law enforcement decided to re-open school for the day immediately after. Superintendent Chad Prewitt said the lockdown lasted “10 minutes at most.”
Police remained at school throughout the day Wednesday to ensure a safe situation, Gants said.
Similar threats were made to other school districts Eastern Washington Wednesday, including Central Valley High School, Pullman School District and the Clarkston School District, police said. No other Lincoln County schools received the threat, local law enforcement and school officials confirmed.
The Reardan-Edwall School District went into a “secure-and-teach” mode of studying in response to hoax threats toward other schools, but didn’t receive a threat themselves, superintendent Eric Sobotta said.
Police forwarded the threatening recording to the Washington State Fusion Center for further evaluation, Gants said.
Drew Lawson is the editor of the Davenport Times. He is a graduate of Eastern Washington University.
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