SACO — A shooting, car crash and subsequent police search had downtown Saco under a shelter-in-place order for all of Friday afternoon and into the evening on Feb. 9.

As a precautionary measure, Thornton Academy and Thornton Academy Middle School, Saco Middle School, CK Burns School, Young School, and Fairfield School, also entered into a lockdown.

Multiple Thornton Academy students who spoke with the Biddeford Courier recounted getting updates about the evolving situation from social media, via text, and news outlets during the lockdown, while details coming to students from inside the school were fairly limited.

When Thornton Academy eventually released students, they were let go in waves under police supervision. 

“It was honestly for the best that we had the weekend to process what happened,” senior Julia Elie said Sunday, reflecting on last week’s chaotic events.

As of Monday morning, the suspects involved in the shooting and the subsequent multivehicle collision at the intersection of Elm Street and North Street remain at large.

Police had previously said that at least four people were suspects, but on Monday they revised that count to three people.

Friday around noon, law enforcement responded to reports of gunfire between two cars, a red Dodge Charger and a gray Honda HRV close to the intersection of Elm Street and Temple Street. The cars then headed towards the North Street and Elm Street intersection, where the Honda crashed into another car, the force of which pushed the vehicles into an Old Orchard Beach school bus that was stopped at the light.

No students on the bus were injured in the crash, according to Saco Police.

Video footage taken immediately after the crash shows the Honda, the second car involved in the crash, and the school bus in the middle of the intersection. A few seconds into the video, the Dodge charger enters the intersection and makes a turn, revealing a broken rear window. Multiple people can be seen fleeing from the Honda.

According to the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office, the red Dodge Charger was found in Standish on Friday evening.

Crime scene data from the crash indicated that one of the suspects had been shot. Police also found a gun in the Honda.

Later on Friday, police released pictures of the three suspects, one of whom is pictured wearing a ski mask.

Saco Mayor Jodi MacPhail said on Saturday that she was thankful no bystanders were hurt and was heartened by the city’s handling of the situation.

“I am very proud of how our staff and students responded and supported each other during a difficult day on Friday,” Thornton Academy Principal Rene Menard said in a statement Monday. “Our students’ safety is our top priority, something that was especially evident on Friday.”

Information trickles in to Thornton Academy

Senior Julia Elie was in her physics class when the school first went into the shelter-in-place around noon on Friday. The shelter-in-place lasted roughly 30 to 40 minutes before a lock down commenced, according to students.

She recounted a dribble of information coming in from outside sources shortly after the shelter-in-place went into effect, with students getting texts from family and updates from social media. She said her teacher seemed as in the dark about what was happening as the students.

“The worst part was just people in my class sharing these updates that they were getting from Facebook or Instagram, and they were all different stories, and they just kept progressively getting worse,” she said.

One junior, whose parents allowed him to speak with the Courier on the condition of anonymity, said that when he first heard the initial announcement over the intercom, he thought the shelter-in-place was a drill. Thornton Academy coincidentally had a lockdown drill scheduled for that day, according to Elie, several such drills happen each semester — though it quickly became clear that the situation was not a drill.

“We were just waiting. And then slowly, slowly we started getting (updates),” said the junior. “I have a group chat, a Snapchat with my friends. We got small details from there before the news broke out,” he continued. 

One of his friends had not been in the school building that Friday afternoon because he participates in a program where he travels to a different school to learn for part of the day. On his way to a nearby school, that friend had witnessed the crash and sent a video of it to him via Snapchat.

Junior Florentia Mendros remembered getting a text from a friend who no longer went to Thornton Academy saying, “‘Oh my gosh are you ok?’” 

“I got information, but it didn’t seem very reliable because it was all different,” she said of those initial text exchanges with family and friends.

Mendros, who was in her English class when the shelter in place commenced, said she could hear police sirens and radio coming from outside. (Mendros is the niece of the Courier’s executive editor, Dina Mendros).

None of the students that the Courier spoke with for this story said they ever felt like they were in acute danger, and never seriously believed the situation was a school shooting. Students also praised Thornton Academy ‘s teachers and staff for how they handle Friday’s incident.

Mendros said she didn’t think it was a school shooting because students were originally only in a shelter-in-place. She reasoned that if there was an active shooter at the school, the school would have immediately gone into a lockdown.

According to the students, during a shelter in place, they are instructed to keep quiet and doors are locked. In a lockdown, they also huddle in a section of a classroom away from windows and doors.

Mendros and students in her lunch block had just moved into the cafeteria when the school entered lockdown. She and over 100 other students were shuffled into the kitchen area of the cafeteria. “They brought down these big metal doors (to the cafeteria), and everyone was really freaked out. So that was when I was probably the most scared,” she said.

Eventually the group was moved from the kitchen to the auditorium. On her way there, she saw a police officer guarding the door to the school. “I was like ‘oh no, there’s a cop here. It has to be serious.’ But also, there was a cop, so nobody could get in without him seeing them,” she recounted.

Police conduct search near Thornton Academy, students are encouraged to stay off social media

Following the crash, law enforcement from multiple agencies spent the rest of the day investigating places where the suspects may have hidden, according to Saco spokesperson Andrew Dickinson. One those places included a residence on Scamman Street Extension, a dead end street a few blocks away from Thornton Academy.

Inside Thornton Academy, updates from school administration over the intercom did not offer many specifics about events going on outside, students said. The junior who asked to be kept anonymous said they referred to the situation as an “incident in the community.”

Halfway through the lockdown, Headmaster Rene Menard began offering updates to students, but those were also fairly detail-free, according to Elie. Specific information about what had taken place was gleaned from social media, news sources, and texts from people outside.

In a message relayed through a spokesperson, Principal Menard spoke to this, saying, “there were many unknowns during the day, and as always, we defer communication of an incident like this to the Saco Police. We provided regular updates to the Thornton community, focusing on Thornton’s response to the situation.”

Elie said she thinks Thornton Academy’s approach to information sharing was generally sound; however, “I think it would have been helpful if they somewhat addressed the situation. Like they didn’t need to go into detail, but (they could have) given us some idea of what was going on outside,” she said.

Elie recounted that her teacher told her and others to try to stay off their phones unless they were conversing with their parents. “‘Try to stay away from social media because there’s a lot of rumors going around and we don’t know the truth of what’s happening,'” she remembered her teacher saying. 

The junior who asked to be kept anonymous said his teacher did try to keep students from checking social media, “but as time progressed more and more students started using phones.”

Students released under police supervision

The school day usually ends at 2:45 p.m. for Thornton Academy students, but on Friday it wasn’t until around 3:30 p.m. that students began being let go. Police were there to assist with the release of students.

“You weren’t allowed to leave without a cop escorting you and (students) were taken to the door, so you couldn’t just leave,” said Mendros. Students who had driven themselves to school were the first to be let go, then people who took buses. Later they released students who were getting picked up and lastly walkers, who were transported home via bus. “It took a really long time,” she recalled.

“I really realized the weight of the situation … when we ended up getting dismissed and I saw all the police officers out in the parking lot,” said Elie. “It was definitely a little nerve racking, the way that the police officers were guiding our cars out of a certain part of the parking lot and making sure we all went the same way.“

Elie, who lives in Dayton, drove past blocked off roads on her way home.

“Once I got out of Saco, I was definitely relieved,” she said.

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