Palo Alto High School Lockdown Today – In a developing story, Palo Alto High School in Palo Alto, California is currently under emergency lockdown today, Tuesday, April 25th, 2023. According to sources, a shelter-in-place was issued on campus following a report of a threat. The Alto Police Department is on the scene, and they have advised the public to avoid the area until further notice. At the time of this publication, authorities are yet to identify any threat on campus. As of now, it is unclear how long the Palo Alto High School will remain under a lockdown. All staff and students are safe.
RELATED ARTICLE: Threat against Palo Alto High was a hoax
Police say that the threat against Palo Alto High School that caused the school and the nearby district office to go into lockdown Thursday afternoon, March 29, 2018, was made up. Investigators have found that the threat call came from a phone that went missing or was stolen earlier in the day at the Town & Country Village shopping center. The police are looking for the person who made the call. Police say that at 12:31, a man called 911 twice from his cell phone and gave his first and last name.
Police said in a press statement that the caller, whose name was not given, said he was going to “shoot up” the school in 15 minutes. Police said that the nearby high school at 50 Embarcadero Road and the district office at 25 Churchill Ave. were put on lockdown as a safety measure. Students were told to go into a classroom right away over the school’s PA system.
Police said that when they looked into the calls, they found that the caller’s name matched that of a present student at the school. When police found the student in a locked-down classroom, they found out that he wasn’t involved in the event and that his phone number didn’t match the one used by the person who made the threat. Officers also searched his home and didn’t find any illegal items there.
Investigators later found out that the phone that had been used to make the threatening calls was owned by an adult who had nothing to do with the school. Police said that the owner of the phone no longer had it because it had been lost or stolen earlier that day at the Town and Country Village shopping center, which is across the street from Paly.
Police say that when the owner of the phone that the threat was made from learned it was missing, they called their carrier to have the phone turned off. So, whoever had the phone could call 911 from it, but police officers trying to get in touch with the caller couldn’t reach them. After the police searched the school while students, teachers, and staff were on lockdown, they didn’t find any violence or people who were hurt.
Ken Duecker, who is in charge of the city’s Office of Emergency Services, said that the lockdown ended at 2:15 p.m., when people were allowed to leave the school but not come back in. Interim Superintendent Karen Hendricks said that children were let out of school at the usual time, 3:25 p.m.
Police said that Palo Alto cops planned to stay on campus for the rest of the day. Detectives are following up on many tips from people at the school. As they continue to look into what happened, the police say they are working closely with school staff. Lia Salvaterria, a Paly student, told the Weekly via text message that during the shutdown, she heard a message over the school’s PA system telling people “first to go to a classroom. Then they said it was lockdown.”
During the lockdown, police officers and patrol cars were seen blocking the exits to the high school and district office. Menlo Park and Mountain View police officers and Santa Clara County sheriff’s detectives working for the Stanford Department of Public Safety were also there.
News from SNBC13.com
