Police SWAT and K9 units swarmed Lowell Elementary early Thursday morning after alarms inside the school were tripped. In a review of a recording of the morning’s police scanner chatter, there is a report of the K9 unit finding trace of somebody around nearby houses, a report that a neighbor said he heard somebody in his backyard and the SWAT team reporting that they found nobody inside the school. The suspect was not found and we have no information about any damage or items taken from the school.

The Seattle PI reported on the break-in:

Police arrived just after midnight after a burglar alarm went off. A male suspect was seen running away into a neighborhood. A search by officers and a police dog couldn’t find him.

Unless there were two very similar incidents on Capitol Hill that night, Rose Egge over at KOMO seems to have made a reporting mistake in her write-up of the incident:

There was a possible burglary attempt just before midnight last night at St. Joseph’s School, 700 18th Ave. E.

Police received a burglary alarm bell and a 911 call a few minutes before midnight at the school. They responded at 12:01 a .m. and saw a suspect inside the building but the person fled on foot and it was too dark for police to see him/her. The K9 Unit was called to the scene but the search was unsuccessful and the suspect got away.

In mid-August, Holy Names Academy was the target of a break-in that included a helicopter search for suspects that fled the scene. A juvenile male was arrested in that incident.

Lowell Elementary was spared in the last round of Seattle School District cuts. The first day of school is next Wednesday, September 9.