LIVERMORE — Authorities were forced to lock down Las Positas College after it was reported a student had a gun.
At approximately 10:45 A.M. on Wednesday, Oct. 4, a campus faculty member noticed a pair of students exiting a vehicle with what looked to them like the butt of a rifle in one of their backpacks. After contacting campus security, initial steps to protect students were enacted, including contacting the police and issuing warnings to students. Per school protocol, a “shelter-in-place order” was immediately sent out and the campus was sent into lockdown. No one was allowed to enter or exit the school and people on campus had to stay where they were.
According to the Livermore Police Department scanner, the suspect was carrying a blue and orange Nerf gun that was mistaken for an actual gun since, according to LPC Campus Safety Department Supervisor Sean Prather, “the butt of the gun looks like a real gun” and required an immediate reaction. About 30 minutes after the initial report, police confirmed there were two students involved though only one was seen with the gun.
Both students were detained, and at 11:54 A.M. the all-clear signal was given and lockdown was lifted.
School officials and campus security held a briefing on campus at 1 P.M., during which Lt. John Hurd said “We’ve trained (at Las Positas College) before, doing active shooter training scenarios and it paid off. Everything went really well. We went from 10:45 for an hour and ten minutes, from the first call to when we had it resolved.”
The interim LPC president Roana Bennie, CLPCCD chancellor Jannett N. Jackson, and LPC Campus Safety Department Supervisor Sean Prather all stated that they were “glad this incident turned out the way it did” and that the emergency system and safety protocols, which had not faced a real life test until now, all worked perfectly to keep students out of harms way and allowed the police to perform their duties in a quick and effective manner.
