The Bonduel School District was put on a lockdown earlier this morning, after learning shooting threats were made towards students in the high school.
“A student who was in school received some text messages from a non-student, who was a former student,” said Bonduel Police Chief Todd Chaney. “In the text message, he was making threats to come to the school with a gun to shoot a couple of other students. Law enforcement was notified. We put the school and St. Paul [Lutheran School] into lockdown.”
Law enforcement was sent to the location of the suspect, where he was then taken into custody. No details about the suspect are being released.
Initially, the lockdown consisted of holding students in their classrooms, however, the lockdown level was raised, based on the severity and how imminent the threat could be. That occurred when there was question as to where the suspect was located.
The threat was eliminated without incident and credit is being given to the high school student who brought the threat to the attention of school staff.
“It underscores the value of the relationships that we build with kids,” said Bonduel District Administrator Patrick Rau. “When it’s something this serious, they can trust our school staff. We’re going to take every precaution and make sure everybody is safe. I don’t know how serious the suspect was, if he had means to carry out the threat. We’re just very thankful for [the student] to step forward and help us out.”
Rau added although a threat of this nature can be scary for all those involved, he was happy with how it was handled by staff in the district.
“I thought it was handled very, very well,” said Rau. “The communication between administration, between office staff, and other staff was great. Some unexpected things to pop-up, about we were going into lockdown and we had a departure time for our 4-K students. We made sure we were communicating with those parents.”
The lockdown was lifted before the release of early morning 4-K, which avoided any conflict. In that case, St. Paul had offered to take in those students if a lockdown were still in place.
Rau noted after administrators finished debriefing, there were a couple things they could improve upon, but overall he is very confident in his staff to handle these types of situations. Meetings with teachers and other staff are planned after school, to provide more feedback.
Students and classes in Bonduel resumed as normal Thursday afternoon.