FARGO, N.D. – The Fargo Police Department has determined there’s no threat to the public after Red River Regional Dispatch received calls indicating a person was outside of North High School with a weapon.
In a press conference outside Fargo North High School, school officials and law enforcement addressed the situation, which led to lockdowns at North High, Washington Elementary and Ben Franklin Middle Schools.
“At 1:14 p.m., a call came in where potentially an armed individual was headed towards the Fargo North School,” Fargo Police Department interim chief Travis Stefonowicz said. “Our school resource officer was already on scene and was able to establish contact with the school administration and together they were able to lock down the school and make sure that everybody on the inside was okay. That took a few minutes to take place.”
Once the lockdown was secured and no injuries were reported, officers began working the outside of the school to ‘ensure there was nothing of note on the outside.’
“They were able to confirm this through drone technology, school cameras, and our partner agencies as they worked through the neighborhood and neighboring schools and outside in the parking lot through visual confirmation with all the law enforcement resources that were available,” Stefonowicz said. “After that, we were able to establish contact with the school administration and messaging went out both to the community and to parent groups.”
Fargo Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Cory Steiner said the district’s incident command center was established at the district office, where immediate contact was made with Fargo North administration and law enforcement.
He said the district is ‘very understanding that the most important thing any parent gives to us is their child every day.’
“And so the first thing we make sure and we take serious is making sure every kid and staff member in those buildings are safe,” Steiner said. “And once we were able to secure and make sure that was done, we started notifying.”
Stefonowicz noted that a call similar to this was in South Dakota.
“Which led to the potentially wasn’t as credible as we first thought,” he said. “But again, out of abundance of caution, we used all available resources so that we could ensure the safety of our kids and our community.”
Stefonowicz said the call was potentially a swatting call, but that all necessary steps were still taken.
“We will use our state and local federal partners to ensure that whatever we can do to make sure that something like this doesn’t happen again, we will do,” he said.
