Last week, two unrelated incidents occurred on two consecutive days, each affecting
students at Marietta Public Schools.
On Thursday, August 22, law enforcement authorities received a call of an individual
walking on the side of Highway 77. Reportedly the individual had a knife which he was
using to cut himself.
Although officers responded quickly and apprehended the man, since the incident took
place just across the street from the school, administrators chose to lockdown.
“Because the man was armed, just in case he escaped officers and tried to come onto
our campus, we decided to lockdown until he was removed,” said Superintendent
Brandi Naylor.
The suspect was taken into custody and transported to the Love County Justice Center
a short time later and classes resumed their normal schedule.
The second incident occurred on Friday, August 23, when a bomb threat was phoned
into the high school at 8:58 a.m. Following school procedure, students were evacuated.
Law enforcement officers were called in to search buildings. Once school administrators
were given the all-clear from law enforcement, students were brought back and classes
were resumed.
While neither incident was the fault of the school, both necessitated a response.
“The safety of our students is our top priority,” said Naylor, “and we want to reassure our
parents that whenever students might be in harm’s way, we take that very seriously. We
also want our parents to keep in mind that we will communicate to them as quickly as
we can, but we are busy with students, so that communication may be delayed a few
moments.”
The policies and procedures that dictate the schools’ response to situations like these
are board-approved and have been rehearsed and refined through drills completed
periodically.
“We want to thank our principals and staff for calmly and quickly working to keep our
kids safe, and also our resource officer, Jeremy Hartman, and all of the responding
officers and agencies,” Naylor said. “We always hope that these types of incidents never
happen, but we drill and practice so we are prepared, and that practice was evident in
how smoothly things went both days.”