Classes cancelled at Transcona school after threat

Students and staff at Bernie Wolfe School had to evacuate Wednesday morning following a threatening call.

Winnipeg Police Service spokesman Const. Pat Saydak said patrol officers were called to the school just after 8:30 a.m. for the reported “threats call.”

He added the school division relocated the students and cancelled classes for the day “out of an abundance of caution.”

Police have not discovered any physical threats and investigators don’t think there’s any risk to public safety, but are still probing the incident, said Saydak.

All kids, teachers and other personnel “safely relocated” to a designated evacuation site, River East Transcona School Division communications manager Adrian Alleyne said in an email.

School officials called the police immediately after learning of the threat and activated the school’s emergency plan, he said.

Alleyne said he did not have any further information about the nature of the threat.

“As the school day was just about to begin, students who were already in the school at the time were immediately evacuated. Students who had not yet entered the school were gathered in the school yard for attendance,” Alleyne said.

“All students and staff then walked to the evacuation site as a first point of contact.”

The kindergarten to Grade 8 school is located on Bournais Drive in Transcona. Alleyne said parents and guardians were to be informed later Wednesday whether classes are to proceed on Thursday.

After a disturbing incident in November in which a registered sex offender allegedly snuck into an elementary school in St. Vital, the provincial government directed school divisions to submit emergency response plans for review.

At the time, Premier Wab Kinew said the province was encouraging schools to implement controlled access doors, among other potential security measures, in the wake of the Nov. 27 incident at Darwin School in St. Vital in which a young girl was grabbed in a washroom. She managed to fight off the attacker and flee.

Convicted sex offender Scott William George, 28, was charged with assault, forcible confinement and two counts of failing to comply with a prohibition regarding children in the incident.

Police later learned George had allegedly entered Dakota Collegiate on two occasions — first after hours on Nov. 20, when he’s accused of stealing a laptop from an empty classroom, and again during school hours on Nov. 27, before the incident at Darwin School.

George went undetected during the Nov. 20 incident, with police saying school staff discovered what happened only after reviewing surveillance footage. Both school incidents were reported to police on Dec. 1.

George had previously been arrested at Dakota in March after being found wandering the hallways. Court records show he was under an order prohibiting contact with children or being in places they frequent when he breached those conditions that month.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca