Threat leads to lockdown of area schools

The era of mass shooting threats and response tactics has now reached Washington County. On September 20, students, parents and staff of the Eastport school system had their morning turned upside down with a school lockdown, evacuation and the presence of armed law enforcement officers surrounding them while being transferred from buses to an arranged safety zone. A "credible threat" was received in the form of a phone call made to high school Principal Paul Theriault. "It was not a robo‑call," says AOS 77 Superintendent Kenneth Johnson. "It was a real person."
The call to the school was made slightly before 8:30 a.m. The high and elementary schools were immediately put into lockdown mode for security, and at about 9:30 a.m. the decision was made to evacuate all students to the designated evacuation center in Eastport. Phone calls to parents and guardians were made by school staff and officials, and all children were released to parents or guardians by 11:15 a.m. The Eastport school system also was closed to students the following day.
While the threat was directed at Shead High School, Johnson decided to place the Perry and Pembroke elementary schools on lockdown and advised the Lubec, Charlotte and Alexander schools of the situation. He adds that lockdown was their choice, with the Lubec school choosing to do so.
In addition, Eastport Health Care locked down for several hours, to ensure that staff and those needing to access care were safe, and the Eastport Memorial Nursing Home also locked its doors.
In a media release, Eastport Police Chief Dale Earle says he was on routine patrol at approximately 8:26 a.m. when the Washington County Regional Communications Center called him to report the school receiving "a call of someone threatening suicide at the high school." He says, "When I arrived that was not the case. They had received a call from an unknown person demanding money or he'd enter the school and start killing people."
Earle explains, "We secured all the rooms, searched every room. The kids were put in safe, secure places. After the high school was secured, we moved them to a safe place via bus. While we were doing that, rooms in the elementary school were also being searched. They were put on lockdown. After that was finished, they were also evacuated from the school and turned over to their parents." He adds, "There was no person with a weapon in any of the schools here in Eastport."
"The lockdown and evacuation process went smoothly overall," says Johnson. School officials will be conducting a debriefing, much as they do with the practice lockdowns. "This was no practice, it was the real thing," he says. The debriefing will analyze the process and determine if there were any steps that could be made more efficient or be streamlined. In addition the location of the evacuation site, which along with the process is not something released to the public for security reasons, will also be reviewed to see if it needs to be changed now that it has been used and is common knowledge.
When the Eastport schools returned to session on September 22, the behavioral health staff from Eastport Health Care went to the schools to provide counseling support to students and staff.
At the school committee meeting held on September 21, school committee member Meg McGarvey asked that an email notification of such situations be sent to board members. Johnson replied, "I can send a generic email to board members. ... I don't know how quickly it could be sent. Things were happening quickly yesterday, and the students were first and foremost." Principal Theriault added that while the children were all safely on their way home by 11:15 that morning, "I didn't feel like I had a second until about 2:30 p.m."
Social media platforms were rife with postings by concerned parents trying to find out what was happening that morning. However, Johnson explains that communication with parents and guardians must happen directly with phone calls. It's a time‑consuming process, but "we can't put this out on social media or the radio because it could be monitored by anyone. You could have some person looking to do harm monitoring for information." While he's sure that some parents felt the phone calls of communication and return of their children wasn't happening fast enough C "I can understand that" C the process has to occur in an orderly fashion in order to ensure the safety of every child. The evacuation site worked well, he adds.
The investigation into the phone call and its origin is ongoing and open, says Earle. He acknowledges assistance from the Washington County Sheriff's Department, Pleasant Point Police Department, the Maine Warden Service, U.S. Coast Guard Station Eastport, Eastport Fire Department and Eastport Public Works during the incident.
Johnson adds that he was "very pleased" with the lockdown and evacuation process. "The students and parents were overall very calm, very orderly, and I appreciate that very much." In addition he is grateful to the school staff and law enforcement personnel involved.