Following a swatting call on December 6, 2024, Bellevue East was put into secure status to protect the safety of students and staff. Then, due to similar calls in nearby school districts, the secure escalated to a lockdown. The lockdown was lifted after police swept the school and determined there was no threat.
“Everybody did really well in taking it seriously at the beginning,” School Resource Officer Nathan Moore said, “because we never know if they’re going to make these six false calls to put us in that state of mind where we know that this is going to be probably false, right, but that we can run it efficiently until we know for a fact that there’s nothing going on.”
The lockdown was triggered by an illegal swatting call, which occurs when someone falsely reports a threat to emergency services to trigger a law enforcement response. According to the police case report, “the caller stated they had an AR outside of the school and were going to kill everyone.” Police are still investigating the swatting call, but a Bellevue Public Schools email stated that the call came from out of the country.
“It did turn out to be false swatting calls to all of the schools,” Moore said. “There was no active credible threat to any of the schools that day.”
The fact that other local schools received swatting calls helped prepare Bellevue law enforcement. Since Bellevue Police were anticipating a lockdown, they did not have to call in outside help, which Moore said made it easier to coordinate officers.
“Usually when a situation like this comes out, we’re obviously not aware of it, and so everybody will come,” Moore said. “In this situation, only Bellevue showed up. So it was actually easier to coordinate what was going on, because I knew everybody that was coming, knew where their strengths and weaknesses were and how I could use them.”
Police swept the school to ensure that there was no true threat. Once they determined the building was safe, the lockdown was lifted.
“During an actual lockdown, law enforcement’s job is to secure the area,” Moore said. “So if we don’t have any active shooters, our job becomes sweeping the perimeter and the building to ensure that there aren’t any threats.”
The lockdown occurred during period 4B and continued into GPS. Earlier during 4B, a fire drill took place. Sophomore Noah Grout originally thought that the Secure was also a drill.
“At first I thought it [the Secure] was a drill, but I didn’t think they would do two drills in a day,” Grout said. “Then it went to the second stage, and then I knew it was a lockdown, so I got kind of scared.”
Grout was in his math class in room E11. His regular teacher, Mr. Frankman, was absent, so the substitute handled the lockdown procedure. Lockdown procedure for teachers includes recovering students from the hallway, locking the classroom door, turning off the lights, and silently moving students out of sight.
“He [the substitute] said, lock the door or whatever, but after that, I guess he didn’t really care,” Grout said. “He didn’t have us hide, but he said be quiet. We were in an area that they couldn’t see, but he didn’t tell us to do it, we just did it He probably could have handled it better, but, I mean, he did fine.”
According to Fentress Architects, the number one life-saving device in a school shooting is a locked door. However, sophomore Audrey Sloan was in room E09, which does not have a working lock. She and her class moved to a room across the hall.
“My class, the lock on the door didn’t work,” Sloan said. “So we had to quickly go into, I think it was Mr. Lenear’s classroom. That was right next door. And we locked the doors and nobody knew what was going on, but my class knew that it was serious.”
Lockdown procedure instructs students to move away from sight, be silent, and not open the classroom door. Sloan said she heard about some instances that interfered with the typical procedure.
“I did hear a lot of doors, they didn’t lock, or the lights kept on switching on, or just stuff that isn’t good for lockdown procedure, just stuff that didn’t go correctly,” Sloan said.
The lockdown ended at 2:47 p.m. on December 6, when students and staff were instructed to stay where they were until regular dismissal time. The incident is still being investigated by police.
“I am glad that the police came and the police handled it properly because that’s what should happen,” Sloan said. “I just think that we could handle it better and that it would be really beneficial if we changed our system, and if teachers were properly prepared and substitutes are properly prepared, then a lot of the stuff wouldn’t happen.”
