THURSTON COUNTY, Wash. — Rochester High School’s senior football game has been rescheduled to Monday night – after a threat of gun violence forced the district to cancel it on Friday.
A teen is also back in custody after a mix-up at the Youth Services juvenile detention center.
According to the Thurston County Sheriff, the department’s Rochester School Resource Officer learned that a teen was threatening to bring a gun to the October 23 game.
“While the concern of gun violence was legitimate, challenges in the investigation arose with individuals who declined to cooperate,” Sheriff Derek Sanders said.
Within an hour of sharing the original update, Washington State Patrol found the 15-year-old suspect on a traffic stop. He was placed under arrest and handed over to the sheriff’s office.
He was taken to Youth Services but was declined for booking due to Youth Services policy, because the crime did not meet the threshold for booking. The juvenile was then released from police custody.
“While we generally do not book juveniles for misdemeanors, this was an obvious exception and a clear need to deviate from that practice. A notification should have been made up the chain of command, but I failed to communicate that ahead of time, and for that I apologize to Thurston and Lewis County residents,” Sheriff Sanders said.
The sheriff said he did not learn about what happened until late Saturday night.
“After a short call with Youth Services, they advised they would make a booking exception and take the juvenile so long as the extenuating circumstances were documented on the booking form,” Sheriff Sanders said.
Patrol deputies relocated the teen and booked them into juvenile detention.
“As Sheriff, I take full responsibility for the breakdown in this incident, and we will debrief internally in the coming weeks to ensure our staff understand that if they run into external resistance in scenarios like this, the issues are properly escalated as high as they need to go, even if that means escalating to the elected official level at 10 pm on a Friday night, to ensure we are addressing school gun violence and threats appropriately,” Sheriff Sanders shared.
The sheriff said there will be an added law enforcement presence at Monday night’s game, and he will be in attendance as a precaution.
Kickoff is scheduled for 6 p.m. against Centralia.
The case is still under further investigation, and anyone with information is requested to come forward. You can reach Sheriff Sanders at (360) 704-2740 or drop a tip here: https://fs23.formsite.com/wg80xb/zxf1tswggm/index