Police praise Wil-Hi student who reported seeing person with gun on campus
EUGENE, Ore. - Police praised a student who reported seeing someone with a handgun in his waistband on the campus of Willamette High School on Wednesday morning.
"The kid this morning did a great job and that's what we would want kids to do," said Sgt. Ryan Nelson, who supervises school resource officers for the Eugene Police Department. "Even if you're not quite sure, and in this case he was sure, but even if you weren't quite sure make sure to bring it to the attention to administrators so we can come out and do our thing to make sure everybody is safe."
After the student reported what he saw, the school principal contacted Nelson, who summoned police to campus.
Police placed the school in lockdown and notified nearby schools, which went into a lockout. Officers reviewed surveillance video and searched the school grounds, he said.
"We sent an email out to each one of the teachers with the description of the suspect and asked them to look at folks in their classroom and make sure that there wasn't anybody in there that matched," Nelson said. "We had a couple teachers who thought they might have somebody in there, so officers went over there and contacted each one of those kids and determined they weren't involved."
Ultimately, police did not locate a gun or a person matching the description.
"We were not able to identify who the subject might have been," he said. "We have not located that person. They are unknown to us at this point in time."
Police plan to step up their presence on campus through the day.
"We'll have additional police presence here during the day," Nelson said. "I'll try to get some people out here once school gets released to have a little extra people out here, too."
