[1]Chehalis Police Officer Warren Ayers and school staff stand along the fence at Centralia High School as parents congregate at the church across the street waiting.
Updated at 4:05 p.m.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
Centralia High School is in lock down now.
“Due to a specific type of threat of violence at the high school, I’m not going to release what that is now,” school district spokesperson Ed Petersen said at 11 a.m. today.
Nobody is hurt, he said. Law enforcement is on the scene.
They will be releasing students in the next hour or so to the nearby Church of God, he said.
Parents should not go to the school, he said. Parents should not go to the church either, until they are notified by the school to do so, he said.
Asked if they would be making notification through the school alert system, Petersen said yes and social media and every other way.
A joint news release issued at 11:37 a.m. stated students will be released as soon as appropriate.
“This morning at approximately 10 a.m. the Centralia School Resource Officer was notified of a note located in a classroom, which stated a student was planning on killing people during a school assembly, scheduled for the afternoon.”
At this time it is unknown if any weapons are actually at the school and the school remains in lockdown until further notice.
Students will be released to go home on the bus or be picked up by parents. Parents may wait at Centralia Community Church of God, located at Borst and Eshom. Students who drove will be allowed to leave when appropriate.
As of about 2 p.m., only a few students had been released from the school back to their parents.
A Washington State Patrol bomb squad truck was seen leaving Tiger Stadium shortly after that. Tonight was supposed to be the homecoming game.
A large crowd has gathered at the church, mostly just waiting. Busses have dropped off students there, five or six at a time.
Lewis County Sheriff Rob Snaza and Centralia Police Chief Carl Nielsen made a brief appearance, standing back as announcements were made that officials hoped to speed the process up.
Before going back across the street to the school, Snaza said only, “We’re getting additional information.”
“We’ll have more information for the news when the kids are out,” he said. “Stacy (Chief Deputy Brown) put something on Facebook.”
Centralia High School on Eshom Road sits outside the city limits and is in the sheriff’s office jurisdiction.
Law enforcement has issued no updates as to its investigation into what occurred, if any weapon or weapons have been located or if they even know who is the student who may have had some plan to kill people.
A school official did include in his announcements to those gathered at one point during the day, that: “The only weapons that have been found on Centralia High School campus today are in the hands of law enforcement officers.”
More to come. To read ongoing posts and comments from the community about this, go to Lewis County Sirens on Facebook [2].
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[3]Parents and others wait for students to be brought to them at a church across the street from Centralia High School.