WOODLAND, Calif. — Woodland High School closed early Friday after the school was put on lockdown.
Woodland Police told ABC10 they received a call saying the school was on lockdown after a shooting at the school. When police arrived the school was on lockdown, but there was no indication of a shooting on campus.
Police said in a Facebook Live that they are now searching the campus room-by-room of both Woodland High School and Freeman Elementary.
The school posted a message on its website saying, "Woodland High School has been placed on lockdown by the Woodland Police Department, please avoid the area at this time."
In response to information circulating on social media, Sgt. Dallas Hyde said, "We don't have any evidence that there has been a shooting, we don't have any injuries, we don't have any suspects in custody."
Hyde said any reports online that say otherwise are wrong.
"When students are locked down in place, we go after the perimeter search we go classroom-by-classroom," Hyde said. "That's to establish that we are making sure that we're searching every single area of the school to make sure that there is no threat to their safety or anyone else's in the area."
Only when classrooms were cleared were students allowed to leave. The students were then taken from the high school outside to the pavement area on the north side of the school property before being loaded into buses.
Parents were being advised to pick up their children at Clark Field. Parents of Freeman Elementary students were told to pick up their children on Woodland Avenue, east of West Street.
Concerned parents waited on the sidewalks surrounding the schools. Nicole Looney was standing with a group of other parents outside Freeman Elementary School which was also on lockdown. She was waiting for her 4-year-old and explained what was going through her mind.
"Panic, anger," explained Looney. "You just want your kids with you and safe, honestly, because you hear about it everywhere but you never think that it's going to happen. And two days ago my mom told me that I needed to teach my 4-year-old about that because we were watching the news."
School administrators and law enforcement were telling parents Woodland High students would be taken to Clark Field on Beamer Avenue to be released. Many parents had gathered at that location to wait, sharing what information they had. Many false rumors about a shooting and weapons being found were being exchanged.
Busloads of students trickled in throughout the afternoon.
Mother and daughter Rosalinda Barajas and Monce Fuentes reunited with hugs and tears.
"It just seemed like eternal, eternal time, because you don't know what's going to happen to your kid inside," said Barajas through tears. "You know what I mean? Especially when they're trying to get a hold of you and they tell you, 'I'm scared for my life right now' or you don't know what's going to happen."
"We were just in there," explained Fuentes. "We heard all the, like you don't know who was outside the door. We just heard running footsteps and screaming and the minute we heard that we all just ran straight to the farthest corner of the classroom and we just stayed there and we just turned off the lights."
Mother Lauren and student Melissa Boelman also reunited at Clark Field. Lauren explained what she had been told was going on.
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