Two high schools in Northern Virginia were placed under lockdown Wednesday morning after reports of possible threats were made on their respective campuses, and in one case, a gun was found, and a student is in custody.
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Officials at Alexandria City High School said they received a call in the morning “about a student who possessed a weapon outside of the school building.”
At 11 a.m., the school’s principal, Peter M. Balas, sent a message informing families of the incident and saying the school was in lockdown out of “an abundance of caution.”
He said police were immediately called, and a search was conducted. Balas said a student who was “not in the building at the time of the call” was taken into custody by Alexandria police, and a weapon was confiscated. Police said the weapon was a handgun.
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About 11:45 a.m., Balas said in a message to families that the building had gone from lockdown to “secure the building” mode, meaning that the students had returned to “normal status inside the building,” but no one was allowed to “enter or leave” the school’s King Street campus. By 1:30 p.m., Alexandria City High School had returned to normal status with students attending class, and people were allowed to exit and enter the building.
Alexandria police said on Twitter that the student was “detained at the school entrance” and placed under arrest. The student, a male juvenile, was charged with possession of a firearm on school property, police said.
Balas said in the message to families there was “no immediate threat” to the student body.
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In a separate incident earlier Wednesday morning, Washington-Liberty High School in Arlington, Va., was also placed on lockdown and then dismissed for the day after a report of a “possible active shooter,” but police said they found “no evidence of a shooting nor any victims.”
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The incident at Washington-Liberty High School began just before 8 a.m., according to police. Officers responded and searched the building.
Two hours later, Arlington police said it was “all clear” in a Twitter message. “No evidence of a shooting was located and there is no apparent ongoing threat to public safety,” the tweet said.
The Arlington Public School system tweeted that it had “received an anonymous call this morning during arrivals claiming that there was a shooter in the building” at Washington-Liberty.
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Officials for the school system said police were contacted immediately, and students were moved to a safe location.
Frank Bellavia, a spokesman for Arlington Public Schools, said that about 9:30 a.m., students at the school were dismissed to go home for the rest of the day because police were “still clearing the building,” and officials “weren’t sure how long the investigation was going to take.”
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Ashley Savage, a spokeswoman for Arlington police, said an initial investigation did not find a link between the two incidents at the schools in Northern Virginia. She said no arrests have been made in the case at Washington-Liberty, and it remains under investigation.
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The lockdowns in Northern Virginia happened as some schools in the D.C. region have made changes to their policies of having law enforcement officers serve in their buildings.
In Alexandria, police officers no longer work in public schools after the city council voted in the spring to end the district’s long-running school resource officer (SRO) program. The decision was fraught, with some students, parents and officials in support of the SROs and other students saying they felt unsafe around them.
Alexandria is removing police from its schools. Some students don’t want them to go.
This fall, the Alexandria school system has had a run of troubling incidents, and police have been called to the school over fights four times this semester as of Sept. 25.
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Alexandria police spokeswoman Amanda Paga said Wednesday there would be an extra police presence at dismissal outside the school and at the nearby Bradlee Shopping Center. In late September, a student was shot at a fight at the strip mall, a favorite hangout for students.
Students have also posted videos to social media showing fighting inside the high school and at George Washington Middle School.
As the incidents in Virginia unfolded Wednesday, at least four people were wounded at a high school shooting in Arlington, Tex., that police officials said they believe started with a fight. Police were looking for the alleged shooter at Timberview High School, which is in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Rachel Weiner contributed to this report.