Idaho school district goes on lockdown for over an hour. The culprit? A balloon popped

All Blaine County schools in Hailey were put on lockdown for over an hour Tuesday morning because of a loud noise reported from a bathroom at Wood River Middle School.

The source of the noise was determined to be a popping balloon.

“Out of an abundance of caution all schools in the district secured their sites and an investigation determined” the origin of the sound, read an alert on the school district website.

All schools in the district — this included sites that were serving as polling places for the primary election and reacted as the other schools did, according to the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office — were released from lockdown at 11:30 a.m. The lockdown started just after 10 a.m.

The Blaine County Sheriff’s Office posted on Facebook that “no injuries have been reported and no individuals with weapons have been located.”

Between 15 and 20 police officers from Hailey and other surrounding departments, such as Bellevue and Ketchum, responded to reports of a possible shot fired Tuesday morning at Wood River Middle, Hailey Assistant Police Chief Todd Peck told the Idaho Statesman.

“The response at that point is very typical,” Peck said.

“We get as much information ... before anybody arrives on the scene through our dispatch center. Depending on that information, certain hallways are mentioned, certain room numbers, bathrooms, so on and so forth, might dictate where exactly we are responding to.”

The district announced shortly after the lockdown ended that afternoon classes would go on as usual, but parents were welcome to check their students out of school for the remainder of the day if needed.

The lockdown came 11 days after the one-year anniversary of a school shooting at Rigby Middle School in East Idaho, which resulted in two students and one adult suffering non-life-threatening injuries.

“A scenario like we had today is not something that we would study. It’s a great opportunity for us to see how we perform and how the pieces fall in, how we’re able to get the situation under control,” Peck said. “In that instance in Eastern Idaho, that is studied and reviewed. And we pay close attention to that, especially when it’s that close to home.”