Earlier today, Washington High School was put on lockdown. At approximately 1:05 p.m., Rick Williams, assistant principal at Wash, announced to students and staff that the school was on lock down. No reason was given, but students were told to remain in classrooms and teachers locked the doors.

The lockdown only lasted about seven minutes, at which point Williams came back onto the intercom to let everyone know the lockdown was over. A couple minutes later, Dr. Ralph Plagman, principal of Wash, came on again to give details to the incident. He said that there had been a stolen vehicle in the area and that police had stopped the car on Forest Drive, just outside of Wash. He added that the incident did not involve Wash students and that there had not been any immediate danger to the students or faculty.

Just an hour later, Surveyor talked to Plagman about the incident, as well as Thaddeus Paisar, Wash’s school resource officer. Both confirmed that there had been a vehicle reported stolen in the area, and the police had caught up with the car on Forest Drive. Paisar responded to the incident and when the officers decided to use a felony traffic stop, which involves approaching the car with guns drawn, Paisar let Wash’s administration know. Plagman decided to put the school on lockdown because of the proximity of the incident but clarified that “there was no threat to students, it just seemed like the right thing to do.”

Some Wash students were able to see the incident from their classroom windows. “Once the announcement came on, the whole class got up to look out the window to see what was happening. We saw the police car and assumed that there was a Wash student involved, but everyone was confused,” said Evan Zalesky, ’13, who was in Sam Green’s, Language Arts teacher, classroom at the time.