Updated: Just after 2 this afternoon, Ballard High School went into lockdown. Police said a suspected residential burglar had been chased in the direction of campus, and the school went into lockdown as a precaution. About an hour later, the lockdown was lifted.
In a letter to parents, Principal Kevin Wyncoop said video cameras showed the suspect “did run through our building and was in our school for approximately one minute before immediately exiting.” The SPD investigation into the burglary case is ongoing.
Here were our updates as the story happened:
6:15 p.m. Principal Kevin Wyncoop responded to questions about why the school didn’t notify students what was happening at the time: “We don’t want to make PA announcements during a lockdown, as that would tell the suspect what was happening. Twitter and our website were updated to allow teachers, students and our community to get info.”
3:04 p.m. Seattle Schools: “Ballard High School has transitioned from lock down to shelter in place, with school functions returned to normal. Outer doors will remain locked. Seattle Police Department will continue to monitor.”
3 p.m. Principal Kevin Wynkoop: “Lockdown is over. Switched to Shelter in place. Verified that the suspect left the building.”
2:56 p.m. Our staff member source at the school says the lockdown is over, but they’re still “sheltering in place.” All kids are safe.
2:54 p.m. Seattle Police: “Officers were investigating an attempted burglary at a nearby residence when the suspect was chased off and ran toward the school. Out of an abundance of caution, the school went into lock down while office search the campus.”
Seattle Schools: “Ballard High School is currently in lock-down due to a neighborhood incident. @SeattlePD has responded and are currently onsite. So as not to interfere with police actions, parents/guardians are asked to stand by. We will continue to update.”
2:50 p.m. No word on what incident triggered the lockdown. Some scuttlebutt on a possible robbery nearby. No official word from SPD as of yet.
2:35 p.m. We’re hearing from a staff member on site that the lockdown was triggered by a suspect who may have ran on campus. Heavily-armed police officers on scene.
2:30 p.m. BHS Principal Kevin Wyncoop confirms BHS is in lockdown due to an incident that’s happening nearby in the neighborhood. “This is not an active shooting situation,” he says.
2:25 p.m. Ballard High is in lockdown, according to several students on Twitter as well as a staff member on site.
![](https://www.myballard.com/wp-content/uploads/2024-My-Ballard-Tile-Ad-Troop-100.png")
Was it one of Mike “call 911” O’Brien’s “vulnerable community members?”
another thief in the neighborhood….great. hope they catch the scumbag.
Haydude, that’s a “person of vulnerability” Bigot.
I can’t wait to move.
It’s always a beautiful day in Ballard! Or am I just being myopic…
How come the same people who say they’re too busy to report the bazillions of crimes they witness have hours of spare time to post long rants online all day long?
Maaaaaaaaybe it could be that 27 myballard posts a day leaves no spare minutes to report garden gnome kidnappngs and teenagers you don’t like the looks of.
You know you can report all kinds of violations online now, right? And if you’re too lazy for a web form, you can use the Find It Fix It phone app. You can literally make crime reports by merely lifting a few fingers.
They do hold you accountable if you lie about crime though. It’s not like a town hall or neighborhood blog where lying about crime makes you an alt-right hero.
I’m sure the million dollar cost of the emergency personnel response and lost study time – not to mention the stress on the student and faculty -is just another daily “drop in the bucket” for our lovely leaders. Are they going to add a “junkie hobo school lockdown” new tax levy to the ballot?
We need PROTECTION from our mentally ill residents. By we ~I mean hard working exhausted
tax paying middle class who’s kids go to public school in Seattle.
Each school needs an armed guard ( retired or PT police, vet , ) and full electronic cameras with a giant fence around each school and 1 entrance point that can be locked and scanned for guns.
A complete and secure system of security as good
as the downtown courthouse.
Our children are precious!
The City has our $$ to keep us safe. We need PROTECTION from the mentally ill who use drugs and live on the street, they all steal, prostitute, even kill. They are very sick and very dangerous
So … lock them up far away from our homes, schools, parks for everyone’s own good !
It’s about time to start correctly criminalizing these
Sick people for refusing treatment or rehabilitation
They should then be arrested and put in jail.
Treatment or Jail
Not living in our parks, shooting up, pooping on the sidewalk then stealing from you and I , prostituting
In an alley near your kids school then shooting up again and passing out in a bus stop for 24 hours sleeping it off and so on. We all go to school and work hard ,take showers, stay off the booze and drugs just to be party of society and maybe help animals or old people, kids with cancer , make a trail, plant a tree etc.
I will NOT give $1 to find these people who are sick anymore only because our system is broken and they are not getting help
Jail or Treatment rehab Center
Everyone in Ballard needs to demand this from our police. We need 1 for each SPS along with 1 per grocery store and 1 at all athletic fields where kids are playing sports after school and weekends
I’m hoping everyone will wake up I hope somehow
then slowly our City will start to heal and may be the way it used to be 10 years ago before all of the scum started to move in.
I do think we need a 10% Amazon , google, FB tax to help with this extra expenses as they are a big part of the problem.
We need 3 new large mental facilities opened around the area along with re hab centers and thousands of tiny pod apartments for the clean and sober homeless to live in for up to 4 years
Then it’s …Hospital or Jail if found on the street without a home.
Im sick of looking at the filthy drug addicts that live in tents and throw garbage all around with no consequences.
Anyone else agree ? Tilly
Everyone who lives in Ballard ,Magnolia,Greenlake
@Elenchos
Noted. You don’t care about the safety of the Ballard High students. Got it.
I do report about 2 crimes per week in Ballard. Mostly open narcotics use or a violent inebriates shouting threats at random people. They’re mostly over there around St. Luke’s. Everyone knows this.
Hey, are you keeping up with the West Seattle homicide at that track meet the other day?
The news story was awfully lean on details. Interesting.
Slam dunk, that’s “people experiencing vulnerability”. Keep up.
Maybe once Weepy Mike O’Brien finds his wife, they can come deal with the psycho who has been running up and down 15th near 85th all day. Nearly ran him over again as he running, screaming and weeding the middle of the road. Next time I won’t brake.
Maybe once Weepy Mike O’Brien finds his wife, they can come deal with the psycho who has been running up and down 15th near 85th all day. Nearly ran him over again as he running, screaming and weeding the middle of the road.
“By we ~I mean hard working exhausted
tax paying middle class who’s kids go to public school in Seattle.”
AKA Deplorables
@Tilly
I agree. Interesting that the tech companies like Facebook and Google are deeply invested in normalizing all this chaos by pushing their social justice ideology and arbitrarily censoring skeptics, independents, and conservatives.
While I detest the large scale manipulation of public opinion through witch hunts/communist shaming tactics/tone policing/bullying on social media and Youtube – these junkies would be here in Seattle in large numbers even if the 2nd tech boom never happened.
The city has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on this mess. In a private business, you don’t give a bigger budget to a failing department, you fire/hire/restructure. I don’t like Amazon one whit, but it must drive their upper mgt nuts that a city so well funded is so incredibly inept. This isn’t how anything in the real world is done, except in governments.
Plain and simple, we have a city KNOWN TO CRIMINALS as being without rule of law. This endangers the citizen as well as the police. Look at Officer Guzley. He took down a man with an ax without harm and was SUSPENDED even while he was commended by the Police Union.
This city’s “leadership” is shameful.
http://komonews.com/news/local/video-released-of-ice-ax-takedown-seattle-officer-now-faces-discipline
“I do report about 2 crimes per week in Ballard.”
I bet the SPD has a nickname for you. It’s probably “Crazy (something)”. “Crazy Frank”, or “Crazy Gladys”. Something like that.
“Hey, Ed, get load of this latest crime report from Crazy Leonard! Second one this week! The whole thing is somehow all written in comic sans! I’ll print it out and pin it up in the break room before I delete it.”
You’re not even located in the United States, sockpuppet. Fake crime reports from a fake sock identity aren’t going to fool anyone for very long. You get all the details wrong. You can’t get everything from Google Maps and expect nobody to notice something is off.
@Elenchos
Go**amn, you take your time getting to the point. Save some energy for your job.
Pro tip: if it don’t come easy and quick, back off and practice until it flows. Or, you know, give up and steal from the neighbors and blame whitey or capitalism. Whichever comes first.
wow Tilly..your venomous words filled with such hatred, aimed at people that i highly suspect youve never spoken too or met…EVER and to be quite frank with you Tilly, after spending my entire 63 years of life right here in ballard (loyal heights) i find you much more scarier than any homeless person ive come into contact with in the ballard area and as a matter of fact, after doing volunteer work in my ballard, im proud to call many of these people friends of mine, whom some i hire on a regular basis doing odd jobs for me around my home and not once has there been any type of problem with anyone ,,,many have ties to ballard, and have grown up in the ballard area as well but whom no longer have living family members left. anyways tilly, all im saying is that before you start locking up people that suffer with mental disorders or addiction problems, you might benefit yourself by letting go of the hater attitude you have going..a little anger management along with some therapy, never hurt anybody..i ll pray for you dear….sincerly yours, a scandinavian friend
@ Deb: while Tilly’s response is a bit much, they do provide insight. I’m close to your age and if you refuse to admit Ballard has gone to crap you’re self-medicating. It’s people like them/me that have NOT become numb or simply can’t pretend we don’t see what we see. So far none of these people have stolen or worse while at your home. So far that is. But with such a high % of these folks on something, it’s a matter of time. And you want to jail or send others that are sick and tired of YOUR allowed garbage to anger management and not the preps/drug addicts doing the crimes? Now THAT is rich. It’s people like you incessantly pulling that “d” lever that’ve caused/allowed this. So it’s no huge surprise you’re not going to admit guilt. Many just want your ilk to take full ownership of this city. Just where do YOU purchase your horse blinkers/blinders? I’ll pray for YOU too, to get some freaking common sense. Sincerely, your other not so blind Scandinavian friend.
I agree with the volunteering factor; there will always be that need. Good for you Deb, for giving your time, energy and opportunity to the people that need and want work. We do not know each persons story. No community is perfect. However, city planning is most important when they anticipate expanding and developing our cities and communities. We should not be hosting matters of homelessness in our city just because we are a benevolent one. It is all good if we can manage and work with societal problems, if we have a plan and actual funds in place to assist those people. It is not correct when people are simply trying to get to and return home from work and they must always be on guard with the other people that are suffering from mental illness; no matter what the cause is. Often, the number of people that create problems and fear in others are high or drunk. It is not my goal to be sitting next to an inebriated or high pot smoker on the bus. You must not make eye contact with some, or it may come to blows. I witnessed a scenario like that recently on the way to work. Wrong. I have seen the bus drivers hit. A co-worker of mine witnessed a stabbing on a bus one day. I agree with Tilly on the public nuisance issue. Why should I not be able to walk to the Ballard Commons Park on a pleasant weekend day and sit on a bench to read a book? I did that last summer, mid-morning, only to be ‘smoked out’. I sat on a bench and noticed a young mom with her little girl sitting on another. The girl wanted to play on the grass, but the mother said, “no honey, it is not safe to play on the grass.” I knew her concern. Needles or possibly waste. Shortly after my observation, the stinky smell of pot wafted my way and I took off. That is not what public spaces are for. On that particular day, there were at least eight to ten people with all of their bedrolls and sleeping bags strewn about, not to mention the vehicles that they had all of their earthly belongings in. My own mother hired people from the Millionaires Club to do odd jobs on several occasions over the years. Personally, I do not think that everyone that is in need of work is mentally ill. They just simply need to work.
I suspect that Tilly is a parent and is very concerned about the safety of kids in school. She has a right for that concern. Kids should never, ever be a gamble in a place of education. They should always be safe!
Leave it to the Next Door crowd to descend on a blog article about a high school lockdown to let us all know how much they hate our neighborhood!
@Scott
@Tilly
Yes, the city “leaders” make a lot of noise about “caring about kids” during elections or when pushing a school levy but they don’t care if parks, streets, or school are unsafe. Safe spaces? Haha only on Twitter. Meatspace (aka reality) is all about making everyone pay massive taxes and fees to run a gauntlet of street drama, disease and criminality on the way to school or work. Kids ride metro – heck Durkan pushed for free Orca cards – but of course the city could care less about the drunken/druggie psychos who ride FOR FREE and terrorize commuters. Safety for kids? Yeah make sure there’s a soda pop tax!
I suspect that is way they opt for selective outrage to call attention away from the failures here in the 206 area code. When you can figure out the how to untie the Gordian Knot known as “Seattle Logic” let me know.
When you can figure out the how to untie the Gordian Knot known as “Seattle Logic” let me know.
Move to one of the allegedly WAY better cities that you never name, but don’t have all problems you way over-sensationalize about Seattle?
XOXO,
Truth
@Truth
Nice snark but not much of a rebuttal. When you get thin on facts or – ya know – just wanna be in denial about the state of the city you just start with the cute stuff. Are you 16? Have you seen he disgusting sections of bike trail by the waterfront that are filled with filth and junkies? This is why we’re going to tax the businesses in the vicinity (see: Local Improvement District) to death – to make more space for crime and disease?
Sad that you don’t take more pride in your city. Other cities have cleaned up and it’s high time we did. Unfortunately, one can’t tax their way out of a situation born out of wrongheadedness, graft, nepotism and ineptitude.
@Sockpuppet: Think on facts? Nice snark, but not much of a rebuttal?!? Woo boy! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
But yeah, biked along the waterfront today, and yesterday, and all of last week, and all of the last decade. Didn’t see the the dystopian nightmare you describe. Have YOU been along the bike trail by the waterfront recently? I doubt it, you probably just read somebody on MyNorthwest falsely ranting about it and that becomes your battle cry.
Maybe some day you can relax, turn off MyNorthwest and Dori Monson and actually start to liking or even enjoying your neighborhood and City, that you spend so much time complaining about, for some reason that can only be explained by severe mental illness. King County offers a mental crisis hotline, I recommend you give them a call: 206-461-3222.
XOXOXO,
Truth