By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – The sheriff’s office still doesn’t know who wrote the note that initiated an all-day lockdown and investigation at Centralia High School, but they know who left it on the teacher’s desk, and it turns out the folded up piece of paper was found outside on the ground by a student on his way to an adjacent classroom.
When he picked it up from under Jon Rooklidge’s door, he saw “Help us” written on the outside and thought it was someone needing help with their homework, so the student went into the classroom and placed it on Rooklidge’s desk, according to the detective investigating the case.
Centralia High School, on Oct. 2, 2015
Rooklidge teaches in one of two classrooms that share a portable building, which has a ramp that leads up to the two side-by-side doors.
The Oct. 2 incident began with the discovery after second period of the message that stated a student was planning on killing people during the school assembly later that day. Rooklidge took it to the principal and the school resource officer was informed.
Law enforcement swarmed to the campus on Eshom Road and distraught parents waited at a church across the street. Some students were interviewed, and the student body of some 1,000 youngsters were searched with a metal-detector wand before being released in small groups over the course of the next several hours. No weapons were found.
It happened the day after a mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. The high school’s homecoming football game and dance that weekend were cancelled.
Lewis County Sheriff’s Office detective Tom Callas in the following weeks spoke with teachers and students, viewed security footage and handwriting on homework and concluded the boy who put the note on the desk did so innocently.
In a recorded interview at the sheriff’s office, the 16-year-old said he didn’t read the inside of the note and didn’t know what it said.
The specific contents of the note are not included in Callas’s written report, and in an interview, he declined to reveal what it said.
He left copies of it with some school staff, asking them to keep an eye out for any handwriting, from a student or adult, that matches it, he said.
It was handwritten on school notebook paper, torn at the top. It had been folded up, Callas said.
The message on the inside was described that morning by a school district spokesperson as a “specific type of threat of violence at the high school.”
In a news release crafted at mid-morning that day by public information officers at the Centralia Police Department, the sheriff’s office and Public Relations Coordinator Ed Petersen for the Centralia School District, it was described as a note that stated a student was planning on killing people during a school assembly, scheduled for the afternoon.
Callas wrote in his report the note warned of a potential shooting incident to happen later that day at an assembly.
The page was taken into evidence, and partial prints have been lifted from it, for further examination by a fingerprint classification detective.
Centralia High School sits outside the city limits and is in the sheriff’s office jurisdiction, but the district has a school resource officer from the Centralia Police Department.
A somewhat similar incident occurred about five weeks later, with the discovery of writing on a student’s desk that said, “Ima shoot up the school 11/10.” The response involved officers from several agencies searching all students prior to their entry into the school the following morning.
Centralia police investigated and a 16-year-old student who said she was just doodling and forgot to erase it, was arrested for felony harassment.
Detective Callas suspended his investigation last month, unable to find a suspect for the Oct. 2 incident.
Whether someone had a genuine intention to harm others, or someone was just looking for attention, Callas said he couldn’t say or speculate what was going through their mind.
“I just know we took this very seriously, that somebody was threatening to shoot,” he said.
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For background, read “Writer of threat to “kill people” at Centralia High School still unknown” from Friday October 2, 2015, here
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter