Student Threats Prompt Connecticut School Lockdown

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State police detained a student at Prince Tech after the school was locked down for more than three hours Thursday due to an online threat, state police said.

A report about a student with a handgun at the school, at 401 Flatbush Ave., came in about 8:50 a.m., state police said. Students hid in corners and under desks and tables as troopers and local police arrived at the South End school. The road was shut down.

Police soon learned that the report stemmed from an anonymous post on social media, said Trooper Kelly Grant of the state police. Despite questions about the validity of the threat, police checked the building and students' backpacks for weapons in a search that dragged on for hours.

No gun was found at the school, Deputy Chief Brian Foley said. At 2:20 p.m., the normal dismissal time, troopers remained on the scene while students left the building.

Students told family members that the threat was made on an app called "After School." A male student wrote that he had a gun in his backpack and was going to shoot up the junior lunch wave, the students said.

The threat was retribution for a recent incident in which someone threw a condiment at the student at lunch, the students said.

Stephanie Zapata, a 15-year-old sophomore, said she was in civics class when the lockdown was announced over the school's public address system: "This is a lockdown. This is not a drill." She and her classmates went to the corner of the classroom to hide, as they are told to do in such situations.

"I just wanted to know who it is and does he have a gun?" she said in a brief phone interview while the school was still locked down.

She sent text messages to her mother saying she loved her and instructed her father not to come to the school as he said he would. But her mother, Yamileth Lisboa and father, Miliano Zapata, didn't listen. They were among the first parents to arrive, they said.

The large group of anxious parents grew as the lockdown dragged on for hours.

"I felt so bad, I cried," Lisboa said.

The nervousness subsided as word spread that no gun was found and, later, that a suspect was in custody.

The charges against the student were not clear late Thursday afternoon.

What was clear is that there was no emergency.

Foley tweeted around 10 a.m. that he expected the "situation to be calm and clear shortly." More than an hour and a half later, about 11:45 a.m., Grant said troopers continued to search a backpack and a small area of the school.

By 12:15 p.m., Hartford police were talking about lifting the lockdown.

According to the "After School" website, the app was started in 2014 as a place for teens to connect and participate in a positive manner. It does not allow threats or bullying, the website said.

If you have a child with a disability and have questions about special education law, please contact Joseph C. Maya, Esq., at 203-221-3100, or at JMaya@mayalaw.com, to schedule a free consultation.

Source: Christine Dempsey, Student Detained After Threat Prompts School Lockdown, The Hartford Courant, at B1 (June 10, 2016)