Wheeling Park Students Spend Morning on Lockdown as Bullets Found on Bus Prompt Search
Derek Redd Trending
WHEELING -- A pair of bullets found on a school bus Friday morning led to Wheeling Park High School spending much of the day on internal and external lockdown.
Text messages to parents went out shortly after 9 a.m. Friday announcing the lockdown. They received periodic updates via text throughout the lockdown and Ohio County Schools announced the lockdown's conclusion shortly before 1 p.m.
According to Ohio County Schools Assistant Superintendent Rick Jones, a bus driver found two bullets that were brought onto the bus that were not there Thursday night, nor were they there at the beginning of the driver's run Friday. The driver immediately notified school officials, who immediately contacted the Wheeling Police Department.
When the lockdown was called, students stayed in their developmental guidance classes -- they were scheduled to be in those classes all Friday for back-to-school orientation anyway -- while Wheeling Police conducted an extensive search.
Jones said all students placed their backpacks into the hallways while police dogs trained to detect gunpowder residue sniffed each one. Police also ran metal detector wands around each student in the school.
No weapon was found at the school, Jones said, nor did police find anything else that could have been connected to any type of threat against the school.
Jones said later Friday that the student who had brought the bullets onto the bus had been found and the student admitted they brought the bullets. WPD would take over the case from there, Jones added, and the school district would handle things from its end.
Jones said the search took about two hours.
"That's probably a little longer than we wanted," he said, "but we wanted to be thorough."
He also lauded both law enforcement and WPHS students and staff for how they all handled the situation.
"It was so well done and smooth," Jones said. "Every kid walked out, they got in line up, they got searched, they went back. If they had to go to the restroom, we had people escorting.
"It was not an emergency situation," he continued, "it was more of an investigation, just to find out if there was anything to be concerned about. And we just want everyone to know that anything like that, we're going to take very seriously and take our time and make sure everybody's safe."
The school district utilized a new system of keeping parents informed about the progress of the lockdown. District Director of Communications and Alumni Relations Karin Butyn sent out several text updates. At the beginning of the lockdown, they were sent about every five minutes. As it progressed, the intervals lengthened to around every 10 to 15 minutes.
"We wanted to give (parents) rapid-fire updates so they did not feel the panic of trying to call and get through," Jones said. "Because everybody's trying to call and we want to keep lines open. So everybody was great about that."
Friday also was the first day of the new cell phone policy for students at Wheeling Park. Students now must place their cell phones in a wall pouch at the start of each class and cannot use them during the period. They can use their phones before school, between classes and at lunch.
There were some online comments from parents frustrated that the policy kept them from quick contact with their children, but Jones said that, if the situation had been an emergency, their cell phones are in the classroom and they would have access to them.
Jones added that the lack of cell phone access actually helped the situation.
"The kids weren't saying, 'I heard this' and 'I just got a text that they found this here.' All those things just compromise the entire situation," Jones said. "So this is day one of our policy. We'll work on it and we will, I'm sure, make some tweaks here and there. But it's safety first and playing on cell phones second and we're going to just do what the police directs us to do."
Wheeling Park students are scheduled to attend their full slate of classes starting Monday.
"We know that a lockdown took a spark of first-day joy," WPHS Principal Meredith Dailer said in a recorded message following the lockdown, "but we also know that the safety of our students and the procedure of a lockdown has to come first. We look forward to a better first day Monday."