Woman with butcher knife storms LSD

Lancaster School District employees threatened; interloper arrested

LANCASTER — An unidentified 46-year-old woman wielding a butcher knife entered the Lancaster School District’s Human Resources office off of Date Avenue about 9 a.m., Tuesday.

She made threatening remarks to the District staff in the office at the time. It’s unclear what those threats were or why she made them.

The District evacuated employees as quickly as possible, save for one person closest to the intruder, Superintendent Michele Bowers said.

“We had some administrators respond and assist in the situation,” she said. “They were able to get the knife away from her.”

District staff called 911 immediately and deputes from the Lancaster Sheriff’s Station responded within about four minutes. The District locked down its facility.

“People were secured in safely,” Bowers said. “We were very thankful that the police responded quickly and that they assisted in taking the woman into custody. Hopefully she will get the assistance she needs. No one was injured and I’m very thankful for that, but it was still a very scary situation, very concerning.”

The woman was still in custody as of Tuesday afternoon, with bail set at $50,000, Deputy Yeni Deciga of the Lancaster Sheriff’s Station confirmed.

The woman faces charges of criminal threats under California Penal Code 422, makes it a crime to communicate a threat to someone that can result in great bodily injury or death.

The District’s Human Resources facility and other offices are off Date Avenue north of Newgrove Street. District administrators, including Human Resources were in the middle of a virtual meeting in their respective offices when the incident occurred.

“When this happened, people sprung into action and notified administrators immediately,” Bowers said. “We were all in a meeting, so we were made aware of the situation immediately, so we were able to respond very, very quickly and called the police right away.”

Administrators used the District’s

Catapult Emergency Management notification system to communicate, as well as the District phone lines, to notify employees about the lockdown.

“We were able to get everyone that might have been out of their office, inside and making sure that everyone had notification to lock their doors, because we just weren’t sure,” Bowers said. “That’s just a protocol whenever we have an emergency situation not knowing the degree to which the emergency is going to impact other departments and other areas of our location.”

She was glad the incident was limited to one location.

“It was a very scary situation because it happened so quickly and being threatened with a real knife and a person that was obviously very upset, you just don’t know what they’re going to do,” Bowers said.

She said it was unknown at this time if the woman is the parent of a student in the District.

The District is in the process of installing security doors at all of its campuses.

“We continue to assess the security measures that we have in place,” Bowers said. “We have installed doors and limited access to the front entries. We will continue to circle back again to look at ways that we might need to revisit improving safety measures and security on all of our offices and campuses.”