After two fatal shootings in Montgomery County Friday, all public schools in the county were ordered to shelter in place while police searched for the gunman. Scott MacFarlane reports.
Friday's fatal shootings at Westfield Montgomery mall and a Giant store in Aspen Hill caused a ripple effect throughout Montgomery County, including the largest school security order in at least three years.
All 200-plus Montgomery County public schools were ordered to shelter in place, which means doors to the schools were locked. While classes continued as normal, no one was allowed to enter or leave.
Though the shootings were down-county, schools as far as Poolesville and Damascus were ordered secured, too.
A recent News4 I-Team report showed what it looks like when they staged "secure the building" and "lockdown" drills at Walter Johnson High School, which, coincidentally, was the first building ordered secured Friday. The school closest to Montgomery mall, it was ordered to shelter in place before noon.
A dozen more schools were told to shelter in place before the order was extended to all schools in county about 1 p.m.
About 2 p.m. the order was lifted except for Brookhaven Elementary School, Georgian Forest Elementary School, Harmony Elementary School, Parkland Middle School and Strathmore Elementary School. By 3:20 p.m., the order was lifted for all schools in the county.
NEW: I just received @MCPS call. "Shelter in place" lifted at all but 5 #MontgomeryCounty schools @nbcwashington pic.twitter.com/6jn9YnnPgY
— Shomari Stone (@shomaristone) May 6, 2016
The security order came after two men and a woman were shot in a parking lot in at Westfield Montgomery mall in Bethesda by a shooter police believe was a stranger to the victims, Montgomery County Police said. The men were shot while trying to help the woman after she was shot. One of the men died.
Separately, police responded to a fatal shooting outside the Giant grocery store on the 13000 block of Connecticut Avenue in Aspen Hill, about 8 miles northeast of the mall. A woman was shot and killed, police said.
A suspect in the shooting, 62-year-old Eulalio Tordil, was taken into custody before 3 p.m. Tordil is charged with first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of his estranged wife, Gladys Tordil, outside High Point High School Thursday. He was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder and four counts of use of a handgun in the commission of a felony in connection with the Montgomery County shootings.
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The three victims at the mall were taken to Suburban Hospital, which was locked down until the suspect's arrest.
Several other buildings in the county locked down temporarily due to the shootings.
The main campus of the National Institutes of Health was on heightened alert, and its leased facilities in Bethesda and Rockville were locked down.
The Takoma Park City Building, including the recreation center on New Hampshire Avenue, was locked down temporarily as a precaution. Children were in the building for after school care.
Montgomery County College locked down its Rockville and Takoma Park/Silver Spring campuses and Westfield South Center out of an abundance of caution. It was lifted before 3:30 p.m.
All county recreation centers and parks facilities were locked down until the suspect was taken into custody. The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission also lifted its lockdown of facilities after the arrest.
And all Montgomery County library branches were temporarily closed.
