Rigby High School Student Says She Was Stuck During Bomb Scare

One day after a bomb threat rocked Rigby High School, a student and her father are coming forward. They describe a terrifying experience as a group of kids, they say, were left behind in a nearby greenhouse while the rest of the school was evacuated.

The student does not want her identity revealed, but she does want her story told.

“I was so scared,” she said.

She was in her third hour class on Friday, doing a project outside with a few of her classmates, when a threatening phone call came in to the school. Police say the unidentified caller said someone was in the building with weapons and bombs.

“They called code red and we were going to run to the school building, but we knew it was going to be locked by then,” the student said. “By the time we actually got there, the door was shut.”

This happened about 20 minutes before everyone was evacuated. The students outside knew they needed to get inside.

“We saw police cars coming. We were like, ‘Oh my gosh, what do we do?'” the student said.

One of the girl’s friends suggested they take cover in the greenhouse. Once inside, the students began texting people, trying to figure out what was going on.

“They say it’s a bomb threat,” the girl recalled. “It’s like, ‘Oh my gosh!'”

When the students learned about the evacuation, they tried to leave. The girl says a nearby officer with a gun told them to get back in the greenhouse and wait.

“We sat there for the longest time,” she said. “My friends [were] calling, like, 911, district offices — he’s calling his mom, who is calling district offices. We were calling our parents. We were like, ‘We don’t know what to do.'”

Finally, the girl says, her friend managed to tell a bus driver they were in the greenhouse. The bus driver told a teacher, who told an officer. That eventually led to the kids’ release, almost an hour after the last bus full of students was taken to safety at Rigby Junior High.

The student then described the worst part of the situation.

“My teacher — he said that all the students were in the classroom,” she said. “And we’re the first four students in the front row.”

The girl’s father, a former teacher, does not blame the Jefferson County school system or top law enforcement officials.

“The plan was probably sound,” the father said. “But it breaks down when the teacher, who is supposed to account for students, doesn’t.”

A spokesperson for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office says they can neither confirm nor deny that the students were in the greenhouse.

School superintendent Dr. Ron Tolman, however, can confirm that those students were evacuated later than the rest. He says that as soon as law enforcement officers were notified of the students in the greenhouse, they got the kids away from the school as quickly as possible.

“I’m hoping everybody can learn something from this and do better next time,” the girls’ father said. “Let’s not have kids left behind.”

No bombs were found inside the school.