Someone entered the locker bay area at Northwestern High School over the weekend and opened nearly 200 lockers, but the question of whether anything was taken will have to wait until school resumes March 21. Students in the Maple School District are currently on spring break.
According to a Douglas County Sheriff's Department report, the locker doors were opened between 10:30 a.m. Saturday and 11:15 a.m. Sunday. The open doors were noticed by a school custodian during a building check Sunday. He started to close the doors, but discovered many more were open and stopped shutting them so they could be investigated and documented.
The lockers that were opened appeared to be ones that ones that students did not keep locked with padlocks, the report stated, and they had been secured with zip ties. Backpacks, zippered pencil cases and other school supplies were still in the lockers; nothing had been pulled out and strewn on the floor. A sweep of the building showed that almost all of the lockers in both the girls and boys physical education locker rooms were closed, even those with no locks on them.
According to the report, the exterior entrance to the school's Tiger Fitness Center is unlocked and open to the public during Fitness Center hours -- 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday, according to information on the school's website. Once inside those doors, there is access to the upstairs commons area and locker bay as well as the Fitness Center, the report stated. In addition, five students signed into the Fitness Center over the weekend -- two on Saturday and three on Sunday -- according to the report.
