NORTHAMPTON — City police arrested a man at JFK Middle School Thursday afternoon after the school was put on lockdown for a suspicious individual carrying a gun on campus.
More than a dozen local and state police cruisers responded to the middle school on Bridge Road for the incident. Northampton Police received a report at 2:10 p.m. of a male with a gun in the rear parking lot. The first officer arrived at the school in less than a minute and found the man, according to police.
Northampton Schools Superintendent John Provost said after the incident that the school immediately went into lockdown procedures and that the man never breached building security. After police determined there was no risk to the school, students began to be released, Provost said.
At Northampton High School, where students had already been released for the day, any students who remained on campus were allowed to leave in a controlled release, according to Provost. The district’s elementary schools went into either lockdown or shelter in place until they got the all-clear.
No injuries were reported.
“The students and staff did an excellent job exercising the procedure that we drill on time and time again throughout the year,” Provost said.
Information on the man’s connection to the school was not immediately known and the exact charges he may face as well as his identity were not immediately released. The incident remains under investigation.
By around 2:30 p.m., a young man in handcuffs was observed sitting on a curb surrounded by police near the school’s tennis and basketball courts as police removed items from a sedan nearby. Police said they recovered two air rifles.
As the normal release time came and went, parents continued to wait for their students to come out of school. Slowly, they began to be released as the lockdown was lifted.
Students who normally walked or were picked up by parents were released first. One of the first students out of the building’s side door yelled, “Never again am I doing that,” as he walked to collect his bike. As more and more students began leaving the building, some appeared excited and unaffected, yelling “we’re free,” while others calmly walked to their parents.
“I didn’t know what happened,” one student said.
“I tried to call and text you multiple times,” another student said to his parent.