High school locked down after early-morning intrusion

Story Highlights

• Police conduct third search of Boulder, Colorado, high school
• Woman says she encountered people near school around 4:30 a.m.
• Surveillance video shows two people running from building at 5 a.m.
• Officers respond to report of two camouflage-clad men inside at 6 a.m.

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(CNN) -- Taking no chances, police Thursday combed through every space in Colorado's Boulder High School after two young males wearing camouflage were spotted in the building long before opening, police and school officials said.

The alert prompted school authorities to cancel classes for the day.

Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner said police conducted an initial search to clear the building, then sent a SWAT team in for a more thorough search.

A third search Thursday afternoon included school administrators accompanying police to let them know if anything was out of place or suspicious.

The reported sighting occurred about 6 a.m. in a hallway, as a cafeteria worker left the kitchen area. She told police she did not see any weapons on the youths, whom she described as high-school age.

She said one was wearing a ski mask, but said she did not get a look at the one who was not wearing a mask.

"She yelled at them and they both turned and ran," Beckner said. She then shut the door and called police.

"We don't know if this is a prank. We don't know if this is a burglary. We don't know if this is something more than that, but we're going to take every precaution we can," he said. (Watch how students were steered away from the school )

Surveillance videos from cameras posted around the school's perimeter showed two individuals running east away from the school about 5 a.m., an hour before the sighting, Beckner told reporters.

A woman told police she encountered three or four people dressed in black, one wearing a ski mask, on a bike path behind the school about 4:30 a.m.

The woman said she exchanged pleasantries with the group, and one of them asked if she had dropped something on the path behind her, but there was no confrontation, Beckner said.

"Whether that's related at all ... that's tough to say, although it is highly coincidental," he said.

It was unknown how the two entered the school, Beckner said. There were no signs of a break-in.

A Boulder Valley School District deputy superintendent said no doors should have been unlocked at 6 a.m., although the arriving employees could have been followed inside.

"It would have been way outside of the norm for doors to be left open at that time," he said. The school's surveillance cameras are not focused on its entrances.

King said that since a school shooting last year in Bailey, Colorado, only one door is left open during school hours.

Bailey is not far from Columbine High School, where two students killed 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves in 1999.

King said administrators had not decided whether school will be held Friday.

"We want to have school tomorrow, if it's safe," he said.

Police have offered additional security, and some of the district's security personnel would also be on site as a precaution, he said.

He said school authorities Thursday morning immediately alerted parents about the situation by e-mail and telephone.

King said most of the school's students were unhappy about the cancellation. Advanced-placement exams were scheduled Thursday for some students and will have to be made up, he said.

The Boulder Daily Camera newspaper reported that the nearby University of Colorado temporarily shut down 19 buildings during the initial search of the high school.

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