COTTONWOOD FALLS — Chase County High School went into a lockdown Thursday afternoon after an incident involving a student allegedly considering doing bodily harm to himself and possibly to students at the school.
According to information from Superintendent Greg Markowitz, a teacher at CCHS notified its administration that a girl had reported her friend was being threatened via cell phone by a third student, a male, who was not in school on Thursday.
“An immediate school investigation was initiated and the student in question was isolated from the rest of the student body,” Markowitz said.
He said administrators initially questioned the girl who reported the threat, then talked with the girl who was being threatened.
“The results of the initial administrative investigation indicated that the student in question had indeed received cell phone and text messages that indicated that the absent student was considering bodily harm to himself and possibly to student(s) at CCHS,” Markowitz said in a news release.
“That student that had been threatened electronically was then put into isolation,” Markowitz said Friday afternoon.
The investigation also revealed that similar electronic threats had been received by others, who were not in school but had family ties to the threatened student.
District officials contacted local law enforcement officials and immediately went into a total lockdown of the school.
“Faculty and staff at CCHS implemented the building’s emergency response procedures in a prompt, complete and effective matter,” Markowitz said. “CCHS remained in lockdown until the matter was resolved by local law enforcement.”
Classes dismissed at the regular time and all bus routes ran as scheduled.
Markowitz called the law enforcement response “immediate and effective.”
Information about the whereabouts of the student who allegedly threatened harm to others was not available.
A spokeswoman for Chase County Sheriff Richard Dorneker said that the department would not release information on the incident at this time.
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