Reported weapon at Las Positas College turns out to be Nerf gun

An emergency alert Wednesday morning at Las Positas College, causing the Livermore campus to go on an hour-long lockdown, turned out to be a false alarm, just a student who brought a colorful Nerf gun to school, police said.

At about 10:45 a.m., a faculty member at the Livermore campus reported seeing a student with what they believed to be a weapon, according to Livermore police.

The campus was immediately put on lockdown, with students, faculty and staff alerted via text, email and social media to find shelter and stay inside until further notice, while local police dealt with a “suspicious occurrence.” After finding the student in question, police handcuffed him briefly while they assessed the situation, said Lt. John Hurd from LPD during a press conference at the college.

Seeing that there was no threat and that the student had not brought the toy for a harmful purpose but rather was to be a prop for an out-of-school activity, Hurd said, the student was then released, to be dealt with by school officials. The toy rifle was blue and orange.

“It’s really impressive how well social media worked,” Hurd said, commending students and faculty for following protocol and doing what they were supposed to do.

Student Nayana Narayanan said that she was in the cafeteria when the alert went out.

She recalled that all doors in the cafeteria were locked, and they were told to stay where they were and remain calm. Throughout the 69-minute situation, she said, she received text messages and emails updating them on the situation, telling them to remain in place until everything was all clear.

“They handled it very well,” Narayanan said.

Another student, Pardis Sinsoleymani, was in lab when the alert went out. She recalled the lights being turned off, being told to grab anything nearby for protection, and people who had been outside running into the room. She saw on the news that SWAT teams were entering the campus, and heard banging in other rooms.

Doug Horner, vice-chancellor of the Chabot-Las Positas Community College District, appreciated the work of Livermore police and of all those on campus at the press conference.

“I’d like to praise our campus faculty, our campus security for the work that they did, for the calm response from our students and look forward to resolving this one quickly,” Horner said.

In the face of an all-shelter alert, Horner said, the campus has multiple methods of contacting students, faculty and staff: text alerts, internal building public address system and an external building public address system. These three systems allow students and faculty to get inside within a minute, Horner said, and after inside, instructed to lock the doors and shelter in place.

Horner suggested that Sunday night’s mass shooting in Las Vegas may have spurred faculty to act with greater caution.

“Fortunately today there’s a heightened recognition and a heightened awareness that at any day, any time, anywhere, we could be in danger,” he said. “Our faculty and staff did exactly the right thing, and our safety personnel acted appropriately.”

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