ONTARIO — Ontario Middle School went into a brief, “soft lockdown” Wednesday morning in response to a potential bomb threat.
At approximately 8:30 a.m., school administrators were notified that the words “I’m gonna bomb the school” had been written on a stall door in the girl’s restroom.
The school then immediately went into a ‘soft lockdown,’ according to district Superintendent Lisa Carmichael.
While students were in lockdown, administrators, staff and members of the Ontario Police Department did a thorough search of the school, including lockers and book bags. No bomb was discovered and normal operations resumed around 10 a.m.
“This was an incident where a student obviously made a very poor, and quite frankly, a dumb choice,” Carmichael said. “A strong message was sent to all middle school students this morning that this type of incident is NEVER acceptable, and will absolutely not be tolerated.”
The superintendent added that if the student who wrote the threat is caught, they will be “disciplined accordingly.”
Lieutenant Tony Grimwood of the Ontario Police said the department takes all bomb threats seriously and follows up with an investigation. After searching the school, he said he believes there is “no threat” to the school.
“We don’t have any evidence or credibility that there is a true threat to anything at this time,” he said.
Grimwood said it’s also possible that the threatening statement is old.
“Those stall doors are painted and there was no paint or anything on the floor and the scratch marks themself looked like they were not real fresh,” he explained. “From all indications that we have currently, this could have been something that hadn’t been noticed previously.”
Nevertheless, the police department will continue to assist the district as it attempts to track down the student who wrote the statement.
Carmichael urged any student, staff member, parent or community member with information about the incident to contact Keith Strickler, the middle school principal.
