On November 16, 2018, PVHS experienced a terrible fright when the school was placed on lockdown. The students thought it was a drill, but it wasn’t, Santa Maria Police started arriving at the school and staff and parents were scared about the situation. The reason for the lockdown was because a student (who is to be remained anonymous) was rumored to have a gun on campus. Here is what Panthers and staff have to say about the incident:

Mrs. Herrera (Principal)

Why did the student “bring” the gun to school, what were his intentions?

There were no weapons on campus, we actually were going  based off of a rumor, so it was a parent who called, who let us know what their child thought that they heard; so it was like a third party rumor. So that was the only information that I had. Based on that for the safety of our students I felt like it was the wise thing to do, to put us in a lockdown.

What ended up happening with the student, did he get in trouble?

The student wasn’t even at school, he wasn’t on campus. He was questioned by law enforcement because they needed to confirm that he was not in possession of a weapon. It turned out to be a toy at his house and it wasn’t even on him. So there actually wasn’t a crime committed.

What will happen in the future if it actually were true or if another rumor is spread around?

I feel like this is a learning experience for everyone, I feel like sometimes we joke with people and we need to know that serious consequences can happen, even if we say something that we don’t necessarily mean. So I think that’s the challenge in this you know, we are living in a day and age where we need to be careful about the things we say because we live in a society where bad things happen sometimes.

All of our parents and all of our teachers did a really good job in following our normal protocol for what we do in these type of emergency situations. I think it was difficult for parents to wait outside of the school not knowing what was going, but we had very few “parent challenges” and I think that really is good because that shows that teachers were communicating with the students and communicating with the parents.

Here’s what the students think about the situation: