Several schools in School Administrative District 53 were in lockdown for most of the day Thursday after a student at Warsaw Middle School got a text-message threat from a student in another district.
The lockdown was in effect from around 8:10 a.m. through dismissal time, shortly before 3 p.m. Thursday, according to Superintendent Dominic DePatsy.
He said the threat came from another student but would not elaborate on what it was. School will be open on Friday, although parents may keep their children home if they don’t feel comfortable, he said.
“A lot of parents want more information, but we can’t give them more than we already told them,” DePatsy said. “Police are still working on wrapping up their investigation.”
Warsaw Middle School, Manson Park School, Vickery School and the district’s alternative education buildings were all in lockdown Thursday.
A fifth-grade student at Warsaw Middle School said the text message came from a student in another school district who threatened to bring a gun to the Pittsfield middle school.
Ryan Ackroyd, a fifth-grader from Pittsfield and a student at Warsaw, said the report of the threat came during morning homeroom time. He is not the student who was threatened.
At first he thought it was a drill. “My teacher told us it wasn’t after we were in the classroom for two hours,” he said. He said the students spent the day in their homeroom with the doors locked.
“My teacher told me there was a kid who received a message from another kid that was going to bring a gun to school,” Ackroyd said. “That’s all she told us.”
The Pittsfield Police Department was investigating what happened Thursday, DePatsy said.
“We were OK. We just watched movies and stuff all day,” Ackroyd said.
His mother, Joyce Ackroyd, said she was worried most of the day after getting a text from the school Thursday morning about the lockdown.
Students finally were dismissed around 3 p.m. with police still at the schools to ensure their safety.
“I’m just so happy to have him home,” Joyce Ackroyd said. “The school did a really good job handling it and contacting us, and the lockdown, they did that perfectly. The fact that it’s a text is going to make it easy for them to find (whoever did it).”
Rachel Ohm — 612-2368
Twitter: @rachel_ohm
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