West Hartford Police Locate Source of Call that Prompted School Lockdown

West Hartford police of located the source of the message that prompted a “soft lockdown” of the Solomon Schechter Day School on Buena Vista Road last Friday morning in West Hartford.

Police say the message came from Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., which had an incident that prompted an automated system to send out the message.

The message is sent to all students and their emergency contacts and the automated system sends the message to emails, cell phones, home phones, and work phones.

• To sign up for West Hartford breaking news alerts and more, click here.

The message on the call received at Solomon Schechter said:

“This is not a drill. There’s someone on campus with a weapon. To repeat this message, hit the star button.”

Police said that one of the faculty members of Solomon Schechter is a parent of a student attending Hamilton College.

To prevent another incident Hamilton College will add the source of the message is coming from their college, according to police.

Hamilton College went into a lockdown on Oct. 9 after two students spotted a man in camouflage on a field with what appeared to be a gun, according to WKTV News 2.

WKTV reports the man in camouflage turned out to be a student at the college and the apparent weapon was a toy gun that he was using in a game called Humans vs. Zombies against another student in the wide open field.

Once Solomon Schechter received the suspicious call, the school went into a soft lockdown. West Hartford Police officers responded and systematically checked the interior, exterior, and roof with no findings of such person.

During the incident, teachers and students stayed in their classrooms and once the school was found to be safe, the school resumed its normal course of studies, and the school didn’t dismiss early due to the incident.