Stanford Department of Public Safety officers responded on Thursday to a safety scare at Gunn High School, where a student was arrested after allegedly bringing an Airsoft gun onto the Palo Alto campus, prompting a school-wide lockdown.
A city worker saw two men drive onto campus around 2 p.m. on Thursday, one of whom appeared to have an assault rifle on his lap, according to Palo Alto Police Officer Marianna Villaescusa. The worker called Palo Alto police, who requested mutual aid from Stanford and other local agencies. In all, 15 to 20 officers responded, according to Villaescusa.
Officers found the suspects’ unoccupied car on campus and, fearing the men were armed among the high school students who had gotten out of class minutes earlier, put the school on “code red” lockdown.
Parents arriving to pick up their children waited across the street near Alta Mesa Cemetery. Some who were already on campus had to join students and staff locking themselves into classrooms.
Jaysen Levoy, a senior at Gunn, described hearing the code red announcement over the loudspeaker just after he got out of math class.
“I didn’t know what code red meant,” he said. “I had an idea — ‘Oh, isn’t that the shooter-on-campus situation?'”
“It became obvious real quick when all the teachers were like…’Get away from the windows, close the door,” he added.
Levoy said he, about six other students and four teachers went into the math and science staff lounge, where they waited in the dark for some 40 minutes.
“At first, like, people were…a little bit frantic and kind of like talking excitedly to each other and like, ‘Oh God, you have to be quiet.’ Then one of the teachers was like, ‘Everybody be calm; we’ll get to know each other,'” he said.
The all-clear sounded around 2:45 p.m., though Levoy said teachers he asked didn’t know whether or not the suspects had a real gun. The school had done a code red practice drill “two or three months ago,” he said.
Meanwhile, officers received two 911 calls during the lockdown that added to confusion: one call was reporting gunshot sounds near the school, while another came from the parent of a Gunn student saying her daughter was being held at gunpoint inside the school.
The officers split up, but “kept major resources on campus,” Villaescusa said. The mother’s 911 call turned out to be a mix-up; her daughter had called to inform her about the lockdown and was found to be safe.
Officers found the suspects in a classroom, took their car keys and found an Airsoft gun in its trunk along with other weapons — including a hatchet and a knife, the San Jose Mercury News reported.
Police detained the suspects, both students; they later arrested one, 18-year-old Weston Healy, according to the Mercury News.
The Palo Alto Unified School District sent an alert to parents at 3:24 p.m. via its mass communication system. In it, according to a copy of the statement provided to The Daily, Assistant Principal Kimberly Cowell told parents that “at no time were students or staff in danger.”
“Students and staff did an excellent job of following the code red procedure and the Palo Alto Police Department’s response was immediate and extremely effective,” Cowell wrote.
A spokesperson for the Stanford Department of Public Safety did not return a request for comment on Thursday.
It is illegal, per Palo Alto ordinance, to carry an Airsoft gun in public.