No weapons found or arrests made after search of Desert Oasis High School

A report about a student with a gun at Desert Oasis High School Wednesday prompted officials to place the campus under a hard lockdown.

The lockdown was lifted about 2 p.m., after officers finished searching every room and questioned as many students as possible, said Clark County School District Police Lt. Bryan Zink, adding that no gun was found and no arrests were made.

School is typically let out at 1:16 p.m.

Officers were already on campus when the report about a “weapon” came in about 12:30 p.m., and the Metropolitan Police Department also responded to assist, Zink said.

Principal Jennifer Boeddeker wrote to parents that the lockdown was placed “out of an abundance of caution,” noting that the disruptions were minimal.

“The safety of our students is the number one priority,” she wrote. “We will provide an update as soon as it is available.”

Parents contest that the disruptions were minimal and that learning continued after the alert went out.

“There was no education going on and (the students) weren’t really told what was going on other than the rumors going around on their phones and what they could pull up online,” said Aric Miller minutes after his two daughters were released from school.

Miller’s sophomore daughter, Brynleigh, said that class was about to begin after lunch when an alarm went off with a loud voice repeatedly saying “hard lockdown.” Her younger sister was in the cafeteria, their father said.

The girl’s teacher immediately sprung into action, running across the room to lock the door, and telling her students to get on the floor, near a wall, away from the door, the teenager said. “Good job to my teacher,” she added.

Her teacher said that she went through something similar when she was a student.

Through the lockdown, Brynleigh texted with friends to make sure they were OK.

Asked if she was worried, she said, “I wasn’t very scared. I know you have to stay calm.”

After his daughters texted him, Miller left work and headed to the school to make sure they were safe, but he encountered a perimeter, he said. No information was given to parents other than the short email Boeddeker sent, he added.

“And were tired of it,” he said. “We’ve got our kids in there, we want to know they’re safe. And if they can’t communicate what’s going on, how do we know they’re safe?”

Miller said this was not the first time his daughters went through a scare at the high school.

In September, his daughters attended a football game when gunfire rang out nearby.

School police at the time said that someone fired a gun into the air during a fight at the parking lot. No injuries were reported.

Miller said that school officials never told the parents what exactly happened, only that “It was an incident at the school,” he said. “That was it.”

He said he is worried officials also will “sugarcoat” Wednesday’s incident.

Lt. Zink asked parents to talk with their children about the lockdown, and advise them to make sure they contact school administrators when they hear rumors, rather than first spreading them online.

Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @rickytwrites.