RATHDRUM, Idaho — A lockdown at Lakeland High School in Rathdrum on Wednesday morning was initiated by two teachers who thought they heard potential gunshots.
Lakeland School District Assistant Superintendent Lisa Sexton held a press conference after the lockdown ended on Wednesday morning, and said two teacher heard what they thought might have been gunshots.
"Two of our teachers heard what they thought sounded like potential gunshots, and through our training, they've been taught that if you see something or hear something that's out of the ordinary, we don't wait. We react," Sexton said.
School officials reviewed surveillance video that showed no gunshots and that students weren't in danger, Sexton said. While the source of the sounds that teachers thought were gunshots isn't known for sure, Sexton said it may have came from construction in the area.
"We do have a lot of construction near the schools and its potentially possible that the sounds that were heard were actually roofing nails," Sexton said.
According to Sexton, one of the law enforcement agencies that responded to the initial call thought they heard gunshots as well, leading to a second call being sent out to surrounding law enforcement units.
One viewer said they saw more than 25 law enforcement vehicles at the school.
Lakeland's armed school resource officer received a notification telling him which classroom had placed the lockdown on the school, after which he ran to the room to make sure no students were in danger, according to Sexton. She said he reacted exactly as the district wanted.
After the law enforcement determined the school was safe, Sexton said she, Principal Trent Derrick, Vice Prinipcal James Hoffman and the school resource officer went to each classroom to explain to students why they went into a lockdown, check that they were safe and answer questions.
Sexton said the next steps were to debrief with staff after school on Wednesday and to debrief with law enforcement on Thursday. But for now, she said it appears everything went to plan as practiced.
The district's schools perform safety drills, including lockdown and imminent danger drills.
"Unfortunately the lockdown [and] imminent danger type drills have to be a part of what we do every month, just because we need that muscle memory for response and we saw that today," Sexton said.
After the lockdown was over, Sexton said parents were allowed to pick up their children if they didn't want them to attend the rest of the school day, which went ahead as scheduled.
"We were running a single-gate reunification at the school for parents who wanted to pick their kids up," Sexton said. "They needed to provide ID and sign a form to collect their child, and then their kids were brought to them, so we could kind of manage, there was a large influx of parents right away. We wanted to manage that flow and make sure we could account for all the kids."
Lakeland School District officials told KREM at about 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday that the lockdown was lifted and the school was placed on a safety hold.
A message from Lakeland Superintendent Becky Meyer said law enforcement checked the campus for safety concerns following the teacher’s lockdown initiation, but no evidence of a threat was found.
Meyer said in the message that law enforcement and LHS administrators were “meticulously checking the building."
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