MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A police standoff with a man in southeastern Minnesota that put a high school on lockdown Wednesday night ended Thursday morning with the man taking his own life, authorities said.
Lake City Police responded to a residence on the 500 block of South 6th Street in Lake City at about 5:19 p.m. Wednesday after a report of threatening text messages and weapons inside the residence. The home forced nearby Lincoln High School to go into lockdown late Wednesday afternoon when authorities said a man was seen walking around outside the school with a gun. That’s what parents told WCCO-TV they heard from the school.
Police spent the evening in a standoff with that man, identified as Benjamin Anderson, at the home. Attempts to communicate with him were unsuccessful, prompting and emergency response team to go inside. Authorities found Anderson dead inside the home from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
We spoke with one parent who went to the school during the lockdown, and was not immediately able to pick up her daughter.
“She had said that there was a guy around the school with a gun, and that’s all that they knew but I had my two little kids in my car with me too. But I didn’t want to leave there without my daughter but I also wanted to protect my other two,” the parent said.
Students in Lake City knew just what to do when the school went into lockdown. That’s because we found out the school did a lockdown drill earlier in the day. Lake City is a small town in southeastern Minnesota near Rochester.
