Two schools and the city offices in the small town of Stratton were locked down while the town marshal and county deputies searched for an armed man Wednesday afternoon, officials said.
“Our town is swarming with police right now,” City Clerk Paulette Thompson said Wednesday. “We’ve locked our door at the town hall.”
Doors were locked and students were kept inside the town’s elementary and high schools while authorities searched for a man wearing an orange ski mask and baggy black pants, Thompson said.
“I’ve heard he was in a house and pulled a gun on someone,” she said. “Everybody is pretty high-strung.”
Every household in Stratton, which is nearly 150 miles east of Denver on Interstate 70, received a reverse 911 call warning them of an armed man who ran out of a house, Thompson said.
The agricultural town has about 650 residents, she said.
A woman had escaped out the front door of the same home, Thomp son said.
It was unclear what the man was doing, but Town Marshal Dan Cooper warned that he was dangerous, she said.
School officials did not let children walk home or ride buses after school, said Rhonda Crouse, assistant city clerk. Parents had to pick their children up at school and they had to show their identification, Crouse said.
Cooper called reinforcements from the Kit Carson County Sheriff’s Office and the Colorado State Patrol, Thompson said.
Authorities were still searching for the man late in the afternoon.
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
