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SALT LAKE CITY — Wrong place, right time.
Police in the Utah County town of Highland say they mistakenly believed a report of a possible gunman at Salt Lake City’s Highland High last week was referring to a school in their own jurisdiction.
The gap in communication led armed officers in SWAT gear to swarm Lone Peak High School about noon Friday, only to determine there was no threat. About a 45-minute drive northward, at Highland High, police say a student had become concerned when she believed she saw a suspicious person with a weapon.
Her school’s administrators quickly determined the man was a vending machine worker who posed no danger. They have said they did not know until late in the afternoon that a lockdown at Lone Peak High School was related to their student’s concern.
Lone Peak police chalk up the wrong address to a miscommunication.
“We have since discovered that when the call came into our police department it was transferred by police staff to our dispatch center (Central Utah 911) with the understanding it was occurring in Highland at Lone Peak High School,” the department said in a Monday statement.
“Unfortunately, when information about the initial call was shared amongst personnel at the police department, the specific information about the location of the incident had not been clarified. Therefore, our department responded to the school taking steps based upon information that was incomplete.”
Police often refer such a report to a dispatch center in order to quickly alert other agencies, the statement notes. On Friday, dispatchers ultimately determined the report was meant for the Salt Lake City campus, the statement says.
The department added that its priority is the life and safety of children.
“Although determined in the end to not be needed, we feel the response to Lone Peak High School on 10/25/2019 was appropriate based upon the information we had,” the statement says. “In future incidents such as these, we will work to the best of our ability to prevent this type of miscommunication from occurring again; However, we will always err on the side of caution when it comes to protecting the children and residents within our communities.”
Lone Peak Sgt. Jamey Brook said he didn’t know what time the call came in to his agency but believed the caller was the same person to report her concern to Salt Lake City police about noon on Friday. Salt Lake police detective Greg Wilking, however, said he believed two different people alerted the agencies.
Lone Peak police has not yet released a recording of the call it received or relayed what was said in the conversation. It did not return a Monday voicemail with further questions.
Related:
'There was never a threat': Lone Peak High cleared after tip confusion causes lockdown
A report of a person with a weapon at Lone Peak High School on Friday afternoon was determined not to be credible and all students are safe, officials say.In the call to Salt Lake police, a woman is heard telling a dispatcher she has just heard from her little sister, a student at Highland High. KSL obtained a recording of the call through a public records request. Her name is edited out of the recording.
“She said that she saw someone walk in with a trench coat and a gun, and I called the school and all they told me, all they were doing, is they were looking at the cameras,” the woman says in the recording, adding that she lives an hour-and-a-half away. “Her and 20 other students just up and left the school because they weren’t going to put them on lockdown, so she just left.”
It was unclear why the separate police departments received a call reporting the same issue.
“If you say, the high school in Highland, that’s Lone Peak. If you say Highland High School, that’s obviously ours up here. See how those two can be easily confused,” Wilking said. “I think it’s just a very strange situation that happened, but I don’t know if there’s anything that they could have done differently or would’ve been done differently, because they would have had to respond to the safety of the students down there.”
On Friday, Lone Peak police spokesman Dave Ventrano said the older sister believed Highland High School was located in the city of Highland, so she found a number for Lone Peak police online and made a report.
At Lone Peak High, a school of about 2,500 students, videos shared online by teens showed large groups of armed officers in SWAT gear searching classrooms. About 100 officers helped in the search, said Alpine School District spokeswoman Kimberly Bird.
Footage from KSL-TV’s Chopper 5 showed armed officers searching the roof of the building. By 2 p.m., authorities reported no weapons were found in the school and there were no injuries or reports of shots fired. Students were released from class for the rest of the afternoon.
