A parent barricaded an elementary school classroom and was holding a teacher hostage in Southern California, officials said Tuesday.
A parent had barricaded the doors of a classroom with a teacher inside the room at Castleview Elementary School in Riverside, said Justin Grayson, a spokesman for the Riverside Unified School District, who said the situation was ongoing.
It may have begun when a parent tried to take his or her child from the school and was refused, said a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation, who stressed that the information was preliminary and that police were still trying to piece together a possible motive.
No students were in the classroom at the time, and children at the school were evacuated to a nearby park, Grayson said.
A Riverside police spokesperson said earlier that the person who had taken the hostage was believed to be an adult and not a child and that all students had been evacuated.
The district sent a message to all families of students, Grayson said, and officials were making sure that everyone was accounted for. There are 670 children at the school.
Earlier Tuesday, the district said in a statement that the elementary school had been placed on lockdown “due to a disturbance inside of a classroom” and that Riverside police were on the scene.
