Reports on social media about a possible fight involving a gun and a knife led to a two-hour lockdown at Belmont Secondary School on Tuesday.
“There was a social-media post about some non-Belmont youth that had planned on fighting,” said Sooke school district superintendent Jim Cambridge. “So we put the school on lockdown, the kids stayed in their classrooms.
“We knew all the kids were safe.”
Pacific Secondary School about four kilometres away was also locked down for a time.
RCMP officers and district administrators patrolled around the Belmont site, Cambridge said.
The fight, planned to take place among three youths off the Belmont grounds, did not occur and no weapons were found. Two of the three youths arrested are students in the Sooke district, said West Shore RCMP Cpl. Kathy Rochlitz.
“We’re not commenting on exactly what school they’re attending,” Rochlitz said, adding that police will also not be immediately revealing where the arrests were made.
The lockdown was called off at about 1 p.m.
One of the students inside Belmont was Katie Rufh, who said the irony of the situation is that the school already had a lockdown drill scheduled for Wednesday.
The real-life lockdown was “very strange,” she said, and it took a few minutes before students were told what was going on.
“It was definitely scary.”
Information eventually came out about the planned fight, Rufh said.
Both the district and the RCMP became aware of the fight scenario about the same time, said Rochlitz.
“With a situation like this we’re in constant contact and partnership with the school officials,” she said.
She noted that there was “a heightened sense of anxiety” during the lockdown.
“We appreciate the fact that the staff and students and parents were patient as we worked through a situation we were trying to understand.”
“At this point, our investigation is open,” she said.
