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Lincoln East locked down Monday

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By the Lincoln Journal Star

Tuesday, Dec 02, 2008 - 03:06:31 pm CST

Lincoln police are still looking for a man who ran through East High School Monday, prompting officials to lock down the school.

Police don’t know the man’s name, but they do know he identified himself as the father of an East High student.

He wasn’t the boy’s father but caused the lockdown after he ran off following an altercation with the school resource officer.

Story Photo
Lincoln East High School

Lincoln Police Officer Katie Flood gave the following account:

The school resource officer knew the student’s father was wanted on a misdemeanor theft charge and also knew he was coming to school Monday. So the officer asked the monitor at the front door to alert him when the man arrived so he could give the man a ticket.

About 2:15 p.m., a man came up to the monitor and identified himself as the student’s father, and the school resource officer came to talk to him.

A fight broke out between the two and the man got away, ran down the hallway by the gymnasiums, then turned and ran up another hallway.

When the officers and security personnel lost sight of him, school officials called a Code Red. That meant all teachers locked their rooms and any students in the hallways were taken to the nearest classroom.

Meanwhile, during the lockdown, the real father in question showed up at school with his son. He could only tell officers the other man’s nickname, Flood said.

School officials searched the school and found no one. Several coaches reported seeing a man matching the description run out a middle door on the north side of the school, said Principal Susan Cassata.

About 25 minutes after the security officer called the Code Red and just before the final bell, school officials ended the emergency and students were released on time, Cassata said.

Additional officers were in the area as students left.

The real father was cited for misdemeanor theft, which arose from an earlier incident that was unrelated to the school, Flood said.


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Ray wrote on December 2, 2008 8:03 pm:
" Sounds to me like the school resource officer asked the student's father to come to the school under false pretenses in order to arrest him on an active warrant for this shoplifting charge. If that is in fact the case, it seems like a poor decision to choose a school as a location for an arrest. It's unfortunate that this officer put children at risk to catch a criminal for just a misdemeanor. "