Sitka Police Department said today that the four-hour lockdown of the SEARHC Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center on Thursday came after repeated threats against hospital employees were made over the telephone by a woman calling from Washington state.
In its statement today the police department said it "first received a complaint from SEARHC at 9:20 p.m. Wednesday reporting phone harassment from a female,”
“The female was calling the hospital numerous times and threatening she would beat up employees.... the (caller) wanted to talk with her adult daughter who was a patient at the hospital.”
SPD began investigating the situation immediately and reached out to police departments in Ketchikan and Juneau for assistance in locating the caller, the statement said.
Investigators determined the name of the 37-year-old woman, and found she was calling from Washington state, SPD said in the statement.
She stopped calling the hospital around 9:35 p.m. Wednesday, but resumed calling around 8 a.m. Thursday, police said.
“This time she allegedly threatened an administrative staff member” and claimed that her boyfriend had a gun and would come to the hospital, SPD said.
A Sitka police officer "then reached out to the female caller" and she denied making any threats, the statement said. “She even told the officer she did not have a boyfriend in Sitka. She said she has been calling because she wanted to speak with her daughter who was being held illegally at the hospital and was allegedly assaulted by a hospital staff member when they took her daughter's cell phone.”
“SEARHC called (police) a couple hours later and reported the female made over 100 phone calls to the hospital,” SPD said today.
“An (SPD) officer reached out to the female two times and asked her to stop calling the hospital and she said she would not stop unless she talked to her daughter,” police said. “The information was passed on to SEARHC, including the fact she was in Washington.”
The hospital went into lockdown at 10:41 a.m. Thursday, not allowing anyone to enter or leave the building. A SEARHC security guard was posted inside the front entrance of the hospital during the lockdown.
"At about 11:25 a.m. SPD learned that SEARHC was on ‘lockdown’ from calls to the dispatch center from the public,” the SPD statement said. “The calls from the public included rumors that there was an ‘active shooter’ at the hospital and there was a ‘bomb threat.’ The callers were notified the rumors were false and there are no threats at the hospital.”
“The SPD was not notified by SEARHC (that) the facility was in lockdown and the SEARHC administration decided on its own to initiate the lockdown,” SPD said.
“The SPD conducted a thorough threat assessment and determined there was no threat from the female,” the police department said in the statement today.
“At about 1:49 p.m., SEARHC notified SPD the lockdown was suspended, because a staff member talked with the female and also determined there was no threat. The phone calls from the female also stopped,” the statement continued.
SEARHC spokesperson Matt Carle issued a statement Thursday after the lockdown ended, saying the health consortium could not release specific information about circumstances that prompted the lockdown “due to the sensitive nature of the incident.”
Carle confirmed today that SEARHC activated the lockdown “as a precautionary measure in response to a pattern of escalating and threatening phone calls directed at hospital staff.”
