North Vermilion High School Put on Lockdown, Husband Arrested

If you need to bring something to your significant other who is working at a school, it's a good idea to follow the proper procedure first instead of jumping the fence in hopes that you can just bring the item(s) to that person.

Especially in today's climate as we deal with school shootings on a much-too-often basis.

Thursday morning, 37-year-old Colby Clayous Mitchell of Duson learned that lesson the hard way after he jumped a fence at the North Vermilion High School near the gym, which caused the school to go into an immediate lockdown once Mitchell was noticed. Former Louisiana State Trooper and current Vermilion Parish Sheriff's Office School Resource Officer Deputy Brooks David, several units with the VPSO, and the Maurice Police Department responded to the scene and set up a perimeter, finding Mitchell on the school campus parking lot.

Deputies say Mitchell went to NVHS to bring his wife some personal items. His wife is a contract worker - not an employee of the School Board - doing cement work at the school for a private contractor.

Once Mitchell was arrested, the lockdown was lifted as authorities deemed the school and campus safe. This allowed students and faculty to get back to normal activities.

By the way, it is Homecoming Week at NVHS.

Mitchell was booked into the Vermilion Parish Jail for Unlawful Disruption of the Operation of a School.

Eddie Langlinais with the VPSO put out this statement following the incident:

Past and recent school shootings in the United States, along with other threats of violence in local schools, have caused new laws to be passed in the Louisiana Legislature and school districts continue to implement very strict security measures. These measures are in place for good reason: TO PROTECT OUR CHILDREN, TEACHERS AND SCHOOL FACULTY. With this in mind, people wishing to enter the grounds of school campuses must do so in an orderly and expected fashion: through the school’s main and controlled entrance. Attempts to enter by other means will surely cause suspicion and fear, resulting in the school implementing their security protocols and law enforcement responding in a heightened alert mode to a potential harmful threat at the school. In review of this event, it appears that the system worked where the school faculty and law enforcement response were successful working together. I commend both the school side and law enforcement's response to this event. Training for this type of threat is nothing new at the Vermilion Parish Sheriff Office. Your Sheriff’s Office has been actively training within our schools for these type of threats for well over a decade and we will continue this valuable partnership.