All 90 campuses in the Mobile County Public School System went into a precautionary lockdown Monday morning after the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office issued a public alert about a man who had left a mental health facility without notifying authorities.
The school system, which serves roughly 53,000 students and employs about 7,200 people, notified families through social media shortly after 9:30 a.m., saying campuses were operating under heightened security “on the advice of law enforcement.” Doors were locked districtwide and outdoor activities such as recess and physical education classes were suspended until further notice.
The precaution followed an alert from the Sheriff’s Office identifying the man as 39-year-old Clint Austin Barnard. Deputies said Barnard had walked away from a hospital where he had been taken for a mental health evaluation, prompting concern serious enough to trigger the systemwide lockdown rather than action at a single school.
By around 10:15 a.m., the Sheriff’s Office told the public that Barnard had been located and arrested at his home, less than an hour after the initial alert went out.
A spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office, Lori Myles, said the school system was not unfamiliar with Barnard. She said he had reportedly trespassed on school system property about a month earlier, and that parents had separately reported to authorities around that time that Barnard had made general threats against the school system. Those earlier reports appear to have factored into how seriously Monday’s alert was treated.
Myles said the chain of events leading to Monday’s lockdown began days earlier. On Friday, she said, Barnard’s mother called deputies asking that they pick him up, and he was subsequently transported to a nearby hospital for a mental health evaluation. He left that facility on his own before staff or law enforcement were alerted, which is what set off the sheriff’s public notice Monday morning.
Following Barnard’s arrest, Myles said his family is now pursuing an involuntary commitment through Mobile County Probate Court, a legal process that can require a person to receive mental health treatment even without their consent when a judge determines they pose a risk to themselves or others.
School system officials did not immediately say whether the lockdown had been lifted following Barnard’s arrest, and it was not immediately clear how long enhanced security measures remained in place at the district’s schools Monday.
Districtwide lockdowns of this scale are uncommon and reflect how seriously school officials and law enforcement treat reports involving individuals with a documented history of contact with school property, even when the underlying concern originates away from campus.