A Gatorade Gun

San Marcos High Lockdown, Search Based on False Alarm

Friday, October 2, 2009

By Ethan Stewart (Contact)

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A long day at San Marcos High School finally wrapped up just before sunset yesterday. According to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department, deputies completed their final sweep of the campus at 6 p.m., some eight hours after a witness reported seeing a teenager flash a handgun, during an altercation in the parking lot of the near-by Turnpike Shopping Center and then flee towards the high school property. In the end, the SWAT teams, hovering helicopter, neighborhood searches, nearly six-hour student and staff lockdown, and weapon-sniffing dogs were nothing more than a high-stress precaution as, based on the Sheriff's and school officials' investigations, there never was a gun.

Instead, the alleged handgun was actually a plastic sports drink bottle, aimed suggestively at a group of teenagers in a car by another group of teenagers during a verbal confrontation. According to the Sheriff's Department, four of the young men involved in the incident cooperated completely with the investigation during the lockdown, paving the way for the truth to come out. There were no arrests made in the incident and on Friday, the first day of homecoming weekend, it was business as usual save for Principal Norm Clevenger addressing students on the matter during first period.

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Whew!

Readers say: Thumbs Up: 1 of 1 • Thumbs Down: 0 of 1

Bird (anonymous profile)
October 2, 2009 at 5:19 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Land of the free, home of the brave.

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Kratatoa (anonymous profile)
October 2, 2009 at 8:03 p.m. (Suggest removal)

EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY!!!, CALL THE PRESIDENT! SEND THE ARMY AND MARINES!! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!! What a typical Santa Barbara overreaction. Relax people. You're not that important.

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cattleman36 (anonymous profile)
October 3, 2009 at 11:28 a.m. (Suggest removal)

cattleman would be the first to complain that "Mayberry" responded too slowly if someone did have a gun and shot people. cattleman is the typical SB uber lib, good at jibbering but low on actual thought.

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InTheKnow (anonymous profile)
October 3, 2009 at 9:43 p.m. (Suggest removal)

As a teacher who just attended a (tedious) training on school lockdown and other "it won't happen to us" scenarios, I was surprised by how close to home this lockdown hit. The presence of SWAT and other emergency responders, together with the earlier post by a San Marcos HS student saying that she felt very safe during the process, convinces me that emergency plans--tedious though they may be--can truly make a difference and are perhaps most successful when, in the end, people think it was "much ado about nothing." I wasn't there, and imagine it was tough for faculty, students, staff and admin, but it sounds to me like the lockdown plan protected the students. That's ultimately what matters.

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VY (anonymous profile)
October 3, 2009 at 11:12 p.m. (Suggest removal)

InTheKnow was terribly offended by something someone else said, which is also typical SB uber lib behavior.

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Kratatoa (anonymous profile)
October 4, 2009 at 6:38 p.m. (Suggest removal)

This kind of reminds me of the KRS-1 song... "Nevva had a gun". As for you DB's that come out here pointing to "uber libs" and reaction times and this or that....get an f-n life!! Start being positive, cuz positive IS where you live!