School scare a false alarm

Corona del Mar High placed on lockdown Friday as police investigated suspicious bag.Corona del Mar High School locked down its campus for an hour Friday morning, keeping students in classrooms as police investigated a suspicious package outside.

The lockdown ended after police determined that the package contained beer bottles.

Around 7:40 a.m., according to Sgt. Bill Hartford of the Newport Beach Police Department, principal Fal Asrani called to report a suspicious item in the parking lot near the campus pool. The package, located in a planter next to a staff member’s vehicle, was a brown grocery bag wrapped in red duct tape.

Police established a perimeter around the package, then called the Orange County Sheriff’s Department around 8:20 a.m. A bomb squad arrived half an hour later. Students were in their first-period classes during the time officers surrounded the package.

Around 8:50 a.m., administrators ordered the students to remain in their first-period classrooms and evacuated some parts of the building near the bag. The bomb squad determined that the package was not a threat.

“We came to a safe and successful conclusion,” Hartford said, adding that the package’s origin was unknown.

The lockdown ended just before students got out for their break. Second-period classes had been canceled as police searched the campus and barricaded the parking lot.

At first, administrators said over the intercom that the lockdown was a drill. Once police arrived on the scene, however, the office turned off the bell system and ordered students to remain inside. Those who arrived at school during first period were diverted to the campus’ Little Theatre.

“They really emphasized, ‘Don’t go out of your class,’ about five times,” said senior Vlad Vakulenko, 17. “So then we thought, ‘Maybe this is not a drill.’”

Classmate Jessica Cardelucci, 17, also said most students dismissed the threat at first. She had been in her first-period physics class doing an experiment with skateboards when the announcement came.

“We thought, ‘Well, it’s Newport. They’re probably freaking out over nothing,’” she said.

Jack Cusick, the assistant principal of Corona del Mar High School for five years, said the lockdown was the first the school had had in his time.

Schools in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District began holding lockdown drills about four years ago.

The schools hold a number of emergency drills throughout the year, including ones for earthquake and fire. Cusick said the lockdown drills were the least frequent, held only once a semester.

He noted that the school’s response to the lockdown, after so many practices, was “better than we ever expected.”

According to Newport-Mesa spokeswoman Jane Garland, the district has locked down only one other campus in the last four years. In October 2003, Newport Heights Elementary School shut its doors while police searched the neighborhood for a man who had set his employer’s house on fire.

After the lockdown passed, though, the front office staff spent much of the day fielding calls from parents to ensure them that the school was safe. Cusick said that he had perceived little panic among the students.

“They weren’t happy about being holed up in period one for two hours, but the ones who had tests in period two were probably happy,” he said.

-- Staff writer Lauren Vane contributed to this report.