Highland High School reopens after bomb threat, lockdown

Highland High School in Gilbert was reopened Monday afternoon after being put on lockdown for a bomb threat before the start of classes, police said.

Nothing was found during a sweep of the school, according to Sgt. Bill Balafas, a spokesman for the Gilbert Police Department. He said the department will continue to investigate who called in the threat.

Police said they received an “unsubstantiated bomb threat against Highland High School” just before 7 a.m. The school was placed on lockdown shortly after, and students already at school were initially held in place.

No other students, faculty or employees were allowed on school grounds until law enforcement completed a search of the buildings and campus.

Students who were on campus were bused to Gilbert High School, but a power outage there prompted officials to reroute them to Highland Junior High, according to a message on Highland High’s website.

Chloe Squires, a freshman at Highland High, said she was inside the girl’s locker room when the threat was first announced over the intercom. Squires is the daughter of an Arizona Republic editor.

“After two hours of sitting there, the police came into the locker room and told us to follow them,” she said.

Squires, along with seven students and two teachers, was taken to the cafeteria, where other students were waiting to be loaded onto buses.

“We were all kind of nervous because we’d always hear about this happening to other schools; we were kind of in shock because it was happening to us,” Squires said.

Squires said rumors spread through the group of high schoolers.

“I heard from quite a few people that said there were pipe bombs in the school and it turned out that that didn’t happen,” Squires said. “Obviously, that wasn’t true.”

In groups of three, empty school buses entered the school grounds and exited with students waving and hollering from windows.

Glen Smith, whose son is a freshman at Highland High, said the situation was “nerve-wracking.” He was among a group of parents standing on the corner of Highland Hawk Drive and Guadalupe Road, anxious for a glimpse of their children.

School officials later announced buses would take the children back to school to retrieve their belongings. From there, the parents could pick them up.

Balafas said classes were canceled for the remainder of the day.