The Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office has arrested a former substitute teacher for allegedly triggering false active shooter alerts. Corporal Vincent Jackson says 58-year-old Lytonja Barfield used the school district’s emergency management system to falsely report active shooter alerts at several schools.
“She got on the app, and she sent out an alert to the first school stating that there was an active shooter on campus, which was false; and then she sent out five more,” Jackson said.
Corporal Jackson says it was easy for the school board to determine who was triggering those false active shooter alarms.
“They had to verify and determine if those threats were actually true or not. They determined that they weren’t, and then they actually found that her account was the one that activated the alarms to those schools,” Jackson explained.
Jackson says while the investigation is ongoing, it’s possible that Barfield may have been seeking retaliation against the school district.
“The school board is saying that she was upset because she wasn’t being called anymore for jobs; and then recently, she was in the process of being terminated and banned from working as a substitute teacher in the school system,” Jackson noted.
Barfield was booked into the Caddo Correctional Center and is facing several counts of menacing.