School locked down

Bullets discovered, nothing else found after building search

SIKESTON -- A Sikeston school went into a two-hour lockdown Thursday after a staff member found bullets inside the school building.

A staff member at the Sikeston R-6 Seventh and Eighth Grade Center found some .22-caliber bullets on the floor of the boys locker room at about 10:30 a.m. Thursday, according to Lori Boardman, Sikeston R-6 director of business services.

"No students were in there at the time. The staff member walked through and found those (bullets)," said Boardman, who spoke on behalf of Superintendent Steve Borgsmiller who was out of town during the incident.

Standard procedure is to go into lockdown, which is what the school did, Boardman said. Sikeston Department of Public Safety was contacted and responded with 12-20 officers.

"We conducted a walk-through of the building and searched for a possible weapon," said DPS Director Drew Juden. "It took us about two hours to do it and everything returned to normal."

"The children were kept in safe places (during the lockdown), and classes resumed about 12:10 p.m.," Boardman said. "Everything went back to normal."

Although specifics weren't given to them, parents of the junior-high age students were notified at the time of the lockdown through the district's automated phone system, Boardman said.