Community officials reflect on Wednesday’s Canyon Ridge incident

TWIN FALLS, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — It was an emotional and scary day for the community of Twin Falls Wednesday, even after reports of an active shooter at Canyon Ridge High School proved to be false.

‘”When I got the call today (Wednesday) that this was occurring, as a father of a kid who goes to Canyon Ridge, it was a moment where your heart just stops,” said Travis Rothweiler, who is the City Manager for Twin Falls.

Now, one day later the community and those who responded to the scene, are reflecting on a really hard day.

“Obviously, it’s traumatic for everybody involved, I know afterwards, I was walking around, connecting with some teachers and some students, and it’s a very traumatic event, even though it wasn’t true, real, at the time, at the moment, it was for them,” said Sgt. Dusty Soloman, who responded to the school immediately after the call came in.

Sgt. Dusty Soloman says the response from every agency in this area, from St. Luke’s to the Fire Department, Magic Valley EMS, ISP, Twin Falls Police and Twin Falls Sheriff, was remarkable. The training the departments do regularly is why they were able to work together so seamlessly.

“On how we would respond to these incidents, you know when the call comes out, when we go, what are the things we are listening for, what’s the information we looking to gain to determine how we enter a building, to get in there quick, and to save lives, to stop that killing, if it were happening,” said Sgt. Soloman.

The school district does training on their end as well, to make the students as prepared for an incident like this with lockdown drills.

Ryan Bowman, the Director of Operations for the school district says the teachers and students should be proud of the way they handled Wednesday’s situation.

“They did what they were supposed to do to help protect, and to stay safe, we, we know that it was a hoax, but it didn’t feel that way initially, for some time, cause we didn’t know,” said Ryan Bowman with the Twin Falls School District.

Bowman encourages students to process and work through the events, and the school is providing extra resources for students and staff who need to talk about what they experienced.

“Those feelings, those all those emotions that come along with an active shooter situation, they were there, it was real, we recognize that,” said Bowman.

All of the agencies involved will be debriefing within the next week to discuss the incident and what they can learn from it, and so they can continue to be as prepared as possible.

“This is what we train for, and we’ve done a lot of training over the last few years in response to these kind of situations, and the call comes out, the first thing that comes to your mind is let’s role, let’s go do what we are trained to do,” said Sgt. Soloman.

Copyright 2023 KMVT. All rights reserved.