Campus Alert Archive
EWU

A 23-Minute Cheney Lockdown: EWU's Brief Shelter Order After a 'Man With a Gun' Sighting

WAarmed personemergency notificationmedium confidence
UnfoundedNo evidence of an actual threat was found. The institutional response is documented because the alert communication is identical to what would occur during a real incident.

On the afternoon of Thursday, May 3, 2018, a report of a man carrying a gun prompted the Eastern Washington University Police Department to briefly lock down the Cheney campus and push an EWU Alert shelter-in-place. The alert was lifted within roughly 25 minutes after officers determined the report was unfounded and no weapon was located. No injuries, no shots fired, and no suspect was ever identified.

Alerts
2
Response
min
Killed
0
Injured
0
Institution
Eastern Washington University
Public Masters · WA
~10,800 studentsRave Mobile SafetyEWU Alert
Confirmed Timeline

Alert Sequence

2 messages in sequence

Some alert texts below are approximate reconstructions from news coverage, not confirmed verbatim transcripts. Reconstructed texts are shown in italic with a dashed border. Verified verbatim texts have a solid border and are marked accordingly.

INITIAL ALERTSMS
Approximate reconstruction140 chars
EWU Alert: Shelter in place. Report of a man with a gun on the Cheney campus. Lock doors, stay inside, away from windows. Updates to follow.

This text has been reconstructed from news coverage and may not reflect the exact original wording.

EWU Alert at this time ran on Rave Mobile Safety, the same platform used by Washington State University and many other Pac-12 institutions
The alert was deliberately geographic — 'Cheney campus' — to scope the order away from EWU's downtown Spokane Riverpoint sites, where students were not affected
'Report of a man with a gun' avoided escalating to 'active shooter' language because no shots had been fired and the sighting was based on a single uncorroborated tip
ALL CLEARSMS
Approximate reconstruction142 chars
EWU Alert: All clear. Shelter in place lifted. EWU Police and Cheney Police searched the area and located no threat. Resume normal activities.

This text has been reconstructed from news coverage and may not reflect the exact original wording.

The all-clear arrived roughly 25 minutes after the initial shelter order, one of the shortest EWU Alert sequences on record
Naming both EWU Police and Cheney Police signaled the jurisdictional cooperation that EWU relies on — its sworn campus PD has limited staffing and routinely augments with Cheney officers
The 'located no threat' phrasing avoided declaring the report a hoax or false alarm — leaving open the possibility that a real but mistaken weapon sighting (e.g., a holstered concealed-carry permit holder) had triggered the call
Context

Background

Eastern Washington University is a regional public master's institution in Cheney, Washington, about 17 miles southwest of Spokane. According to The Spokesman-Review, an unverified report of an armed individual on campus on Thursday afternoon, May 3, 2018, prompted EWU Police to push an EWU Alert shelter-in-place and request mutual aid from the Cheney Police Department. The shelter order lasted roughly 25 minutes before being lifted. Officers were unable to corroborate the initial report — no weapon was recovered, no suspect was identified, and no shots were ever fired. The episode is a useful case study of the 'unfounded' resolution category that the federal Clery Act handbook explicitly contemplates: an emergency notification is properly issued even if the underlying report later proves to be unsupported, because the test under 34 CFR 668.46(g) is the institution's reasonable belief in the moment, not retrospective confirmation. EWU's quick lift — five times faster than the typical 'man with a gun' shelter-in-place across this archive — also illustrates the value of small-jurisdiction policing partnerships when ground-truthing is feasible within minutes.
Analysis

Key Findings

EWU Alert ran on Rave Mobile Safety in 2018 and continues to operate on the same backbone today, with text-in opt-in via keyword EWUALERT to 77295
The shelter-in-place ran approximately 25 minutes — among the shortest EWU Alert sequences on record
The case is a textbook 'unfounded' Clery emergency notification: properly issued, properly resolved, no underlying crime confirmed
Mutual aid with Cheney Police is structural to EWU's response posture, given the small size of EWU's own sworn agency
Outcome
Officers cleared the area within roughly 25 minutes and lifted the shelter-in-place. Cheney Police assisted EWU PD; no suspect was located and the report was ultimately classified as unfounded.
Provenance

Sources

  1. News
    Brief shelter-in-place alert issued at EWU campus following reports of man with gun (The Spokesman-Review)
    spokesman.com
  2. Official
    EWU Alerts (University Police)
    inside.ewu.edu
  3. Source
    Eastern Washington University (Wikipedia overview)
    en.wikipedia.org
Tags
shelter-in-placearmed-personunfoundedregional-publicrave-alertcheneywashingtonsmall-jurisdictionUnfounded
Added May 2026Updated May 2026Via ingestion