Intruder alert
Parents are breathing a sigh of relief tonight after reports of a suspicious person entering a Brawley elementary school proved to be unfounded.
Witter Elementary school officials acted quickly by evacuating hundreds of students to a nearby park. And even though officers weren’t able to find any danger, the parents we ran into visibly tense.
A K-9 team searched the classrooms and after several hours they were deemed safe. Officers say student safety is at the top of their priority list.
“Absolutely. We’re talking about the safety of our student body. The report of an intruder, the protocols in place with the school to go to classroom by classroom. And evacuating the students to a nearby safe location is exactly what we need to do for school safety,” said Commander Brett Houser of the Brawley Police Department.
School officials also made sure the students were okay. Jaime Silva, the Brawley Superintedent said, “we’ve done everything possible to insure that their children are safe. We had paramedics here incase children needed assistance. Water was distributed to the children because you know it’s a hot day. Of course any parent is going to be concerned.”
Superintendent Jaime Silva also says this will be a learning experience. “We’re gonna continue to learn from this. We’re gonna huddle, we’re gonna come together and make it better. You know every time something like this happens, we try to make it better. For the safety of the children and the staff.”
Brawley police say while no suspect was found, statements made by students and staff and all other information about the intrusion is still under investigation. Surprisingly there was a drill scheduled for later in the day but had nothing to do with the today’s incident.
