For the third time in three weeks, threats of a weapon on campus at Dillard High led to a lockdown and police search on Friday at the Fort Lauderdale school.
The noon lockdown lasted fewer than 20 minutes, Fort Lauderdale police spokeswoman Casey Liening said.
A 911 caller had claimed there was an armed person on campus, but gave the wrong school information and really meant Lauderdale Lakes Middle School, Liening said.
As a precaution, police searched the school located west of Interstate 95 and north of West Sunrise Boulevard, anyway, Liening said.
“Three weeks in a row, that’s major right there,” said John Jones as he waited to pick up his 16-year-old son after school Friday.
“When you drop your kid off, you’re expecting him to get an education, have fun with his friends and come home safely,” Jones said. “You never think of tragedy happening. It’s just a sad situation these days.”
Such frequent Code-Red lockdowns are distressful and unsettling, said Tylon Goodwin, a 14-year-old ninth grader.
“It makes me not want to come to school, because it makes me feel like I’m in danger,” he said.
Meanwhile, Lauderdale Lakes Middle also was locked down Friday, but for a report of a stabbing suspect in the nearby neighborhood west of Interstate 95 and north of Oakland Park Boulevard — not on the school property, Broward Sheriff’s spokeswoman Gina Carter said.
The middle school, at 3911 NW 30th Ave., was locked down for about an hour around noon. The report of a stabbing turned out not to be untrue, Carter said.
Mary Embery, the 74-year-old grandmother of a 14-year-old ninth grader at Dillard, said it’s the dearth of information when the lockdowns happen that leave her unnerved.
“Everybody’s panicking because they can’t get their kid and we don’t know if it’s a real shooter or not,” she said.
If not for her daughter who works as a school bus driver, Embery said she wouldn’t have heard about Friday’s incident. And a week ago, it was the TV news that clued her in.
Quan Tanksley, a 16-year-old Dillard sophomore, said too many Code-Red lockdowns lead to a blasé attitude.
“This school is having unnecessary Code Reds back to back,” Tanksley said as he left school Friday. “I feel that, yeah, they’re trying to keep us safe with the Code-Red procedures, but I don’t think they should call one all the time because it’s usually not a serious threat.”
Neither his substitute teacher nor his classmates took Friday’s lockdown very seriously, Tanksley said.
The substitute teacher continued talking, loudly, over the voice announcing the emergency on the intercom system and had to be told to hush so they could hear the announcement, he said.
As for his classmates, rather than hunkering down and keeping quiet like they’re supposed to during a Code Red, they were “playing and being loud,” Tanksley said.