Parents in Tuolumne County got a scare on Wednesday when reports of gunfire near Columbia Elementary sent deputies racing to the area and prompted staff to start clearing classrooms. Law enforcement quickly swept the campus and nearby properties, and officials later said there was no reported danger to students or staff, although deputies kept working the surrounding neighborhood as the investigation continued.
According to ABC10, the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office said deputies got the call about shots fired, responded to the scene, and spent nearly half an hour checking the school grounds and nearby properties. The sheriff’s office told the station that the campus was being cleared classroom by classroom while deputies searched the area around the school.
Columbia Elementary, a K–6 campus in the Columbia Union School District, sits at 22540 Parrotts Ferry Road in Columbia, according to the California Department of Education. Both the district and sheriff’s deputies treat any report of nearby gunfire as a serious situation until investigators can pin down where the shots came from and confirm the campus is secure.
What deputies said
The Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office told ABC10 that “the shots seemed to have been fired a ways off,” and that deputies had not found an immediate threat to the school. They stayed in the area, canvassing the surroundings as investigators worked to determine where the gunfire actually originated.
Local context
Reports of possible gunfire are not exactly rare in the Columbia area. Local sheriff’s logs published by The Pine Tree have previously documented residents calling in shots heard near Parrotts Ferry Road. Some of those entries describe people hearing what sounded like rifle fire, a reminder of how tough it can be for deputies in rural stretches of the Mother Lode to track down where distant shots are coming from.
As of Wednesday afternoon, deputies said the campus was not in danger, and investigators continued to search the surrounding area.
