Wow-it's not a student....35 yr old man. Don't tell me this is a teacher having a meltdown.
Students held hostage in Bailey
A gunman is holding four students hostage at a Park County school, and several shots have been fired.
Lance Clem, spokesman for the Colorado State Patrol, said it is unclear if anyone was injured at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey.
Clem said five students were taken hostage at gunpoint in a classroom. The suspect has released one of the five, a girl.
"There were some shots fired," said Eric Wynn, CSP spokesman He said the suspect is a 35-year-old man.
Park County authorities requested help from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department's bomb squad and SWAT team, said Jim Shires, Jefferson County sheriff's spokesman.
Shires said Park County is a small department and doesn't have a complete SWAT team.
He said the teams were headed to the department's Golden office to pick up equipment.
Clem said Park County has set up a command post across the street from the high school. CSP officers have been asked to control traffic in both directions on 285, effectively closing the highway.
"We have a bunch of troopers there," he said.
Platte Canyon High School is located 46 miles southwest of Denver on Highway 285, near the Jefferson County/Park County line.
The evacuation of Platte Canyon High School and the nearby Fitzsimmons Middle School came after a loud noise, said Jan Howard, a secretary to the superintendent of schools.
“I don't know what the noise was,” she said. She said students were taken to a safe location, but predicted parents would not be able to immediately reach them because U.S. Highway 285 the only route in and out of town had been shut down.
Lynn Setzer, spokeswoman for the Jefferson County School District, said four district schools that border the Platte Canyon School District have been shut down. Those are Conifer High School, West Jefferson Middle School, West Jefferson Elementary School and Elk Creek Elementary School.
“This is pretty standard procedure,” said Setzer. “We don't know if it's somebody walking around with a gun.”
Setzer said the district learned of the incident about 12:15 p.m.
Students, she said, will remain in the building and classes will continue. “Just no recess,” she said. “Classes continue and we're working on getting more information.”
Setzer said parents are calling into schools and into the community superintendents' offices. “They're just concerned. They want to know what's going on.”
Denver resident Kim Martin said she was listening to her police scanner this afternoon and heard talk about hostages. "Right now, they have a sniper in the library," said Martin, who said she is a fire-chaser for a catastrophe service. "I believe it was four hostages and now there's two hostages."
She said she doesn't know what happened to the other two.
Platte Canyon parent Sally Impson sat at home praying that her son Andrew, a 17-year-old senior at the high school would find a way to contact her. "I"m so shook," she said. "I'd just like to know that he's okay."
She said her mother called her after seeing news reports that the school was evacuated.
"I'm just hoping Andrew will call me. He has a cell phone but it's not turned on. The phone doesn't work in the school anyway," she said. "It's just scary. You don't know what's going on. You hear shots are fired. I hope to God that everything is okay."
Impson said she hasn't called the school because she knows they are overwhelmed with phone calls, and the road to the school - about 15 minutes away - is shut down."
She said her son has been a student in the district since kindergarten.
Platte Canyon High School has about 467 students enrolled and was built in 1958 with an addition built in 2000, according to information posted on the school's web site.
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_4404879
