A phone call to Walmart on Monday night resulted in Medicine Hat Police Service having to lock down the store for more than an hour.
“They (Walmart) received a phone call that was quite disconcerting about an unknown person who had threatened to bring a weapon into the store,” said Staff Sgt. Ryan Thorburn
About 9:15 p.m. police arrived at Walmart and because of the threat of a weapon, took additional precautions.
“We had the store in lock down to make sure that both patrons and staff were safe,” said Thorburn.
Nobody was allowed to enter or leave the store for more than an hour, he said.
During this time police were going through the store looking for anything suspicious.
“We were trying to determine the credibility of the threat or if there was someone making a prank call trying to disrupt the business,” said Thorburn. “We spent at least an hour trying to determine the safety of everyone.”
An official press release by MHPS calls the weapon “a firearm” and says it was “directed at a specific employee working in the store. The caller made comments about attending the store to confront the employee.”
When MHPS considered it safe to do so, everyone within the store was escorted off the premises.
By the time the lockdown was over it was fairly late in the evening. It was left to the local Walmart manager to determine whether the store would remain shut for the rest of the evening or whether customers would be allowed to enter and shop, Thorburn explained.
The person who made the call did not identify themselves and the store does not suspect a specific person, said Thorburn.
“It’s an unknown person from an unknown number.”
The file has been forwarded to the Major Crimes section at MHPS because they have technology to help determine who made the call and potentially hold them accountable, he said. If Major Crimes is able to identify any aspect of the caller they will be carrying out a more in-depth investigation.
On Tuesday and in the coming days MHPS will be paying extra attention to Walmart.
“We will definitely be doing checks in the area and ensuring everyone is safe,” said Thorburn.
A phone call such as this one to Walmart is not completely unusual for Medicine Hat.
“It’s not common but we have had them,” said Thorburn. “We have had prank calls to the hospital, we have had other types of calls to other institutions here in the city so it does happen.”
Every call like this is followed up on.
“The outcome is different each time,” said Thorburn.
