Balgonie high school lockdown ends with arrest of two youths

A call from Highway #1 and a handful of BB guns put Greenall High School into lockdown Wednesday morning for a short time.

Dozens of RCMP officers descended on the small community east of Regina after a call came in around 11:05 a.m.

Inspector Jill McLaren said someone called in from Highway #1, who said they saw a vehicle driving on a road adjacent to the school.

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“The report that was received (was) simply that there was an individual outside the passenger window with a long-barrel firearm,” McLaren explained.

Officers responded immediately, according to McLaren, and two youths were arrested inside the high school at about 11:30 a.m. Three long-barrelled BB guns were found and seized from a vehicle outside the school.

Police were still conducting interviews and gathering evidence at 2:30 p.m. when McLaren spoke, so she said it would have been inappropriate for her to say whether charges would be laid.

McLaren confirmed the boys arrested were students at the school, but wouldn’t give any more information about them so as to not contravene the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

“Keeping in mind that Greenall is a very, very small school – it might seem large, it’s not. It’s a small community and providing any further information might identify those individuals,” she said.

An alert went out on a local community app telling people in Balgonie to shelter in place, but it was removed shortly after. McLaren said the RCMP was in the process of drafting its own alert, but the situation was over before it could be sent out.

Gord Husband, director of education for Prairie Valley School Division, said the high school was put into a hold and secure situation.

The school posted a letter to parents and families to social media which said the school then moved to a lockdown when RCMP members entered.

“No students were under any immediate threat, and this was a precautionary measure,” read the letter.

Husband said that included moving students out of hallways and getting them into classrooms. He said no communication was sent directly to parents or families in the moment.

The hold and secure was implemented around 11 a.m. and everything was lifted in the school around noon.

Any time something like this happens, Husband said, the division makes sure additional supports are brought into the school. There will be supports available at Greenall on Thursday.

“This does create a level of anxiousness because it is a very real issue that we’ve encountered today, but we also want to ensure that our staff is also in a spot that allows them to function at the highest possible level they can,” Husband said.

Both Husband and McLaren praised the speed of the RCMP officers’ response to the call.

“I could not be more proud of the way the situation was handled by police and our responding officers,” McLaren said.