The suspect, armed with an unspecified weapon, was taken into police custody Tuesday afternoon. State Police Captain said that the school will undergo an increased law enforcement service for the next couple of days. The teenage suspect was taken to a local hospital for evaluation.
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Police said the boy, who was not named, took 27 students and a teacher hostage around 1:30 p.m.at Philip Barbour High School in the town of Philippi, reports ABC-affiliate WCHS-TV. Alerted by those students, another teacher told school administrators, who then called 911.
The suspect agreed to let the hostages go following initial negotiations, and later agreed to put the gun down and surrender.
There were no reports of injuries, police said.
Steve Saltis was among several anxious parents who went to the school and waited outside an area cordoned off by police tape for students to be released.
Baylous said the school had an evacuation plan in place, which worked as designed.
Saltis advised The Related Press by phone that his daughter attends the varsity.
Saltis said many students had been sitting in the school’s football stadium after the school was evacuated and that he was able to talk to his daughter. However Saltis says regulation enforcement officers informed him nothing whereas the suspect was nonetheless within the faculty. While the school will open on schedule, classes will commence after two hours, he added.
It was only the ninth day of school for the students of Philip Barbour High School, surely the incidents will hunt the mind of the students and their parents for a very long time.
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Asked why students weren’t immediately released to their parents, Saltis said he could only speculate: “She’s in their protection”. He didn’t know whether anyone else inside the school was involved. Classes began in Barbour County on August 13.
