WORLAND — While seeing someone carrying a firearm to their vehicle in Wyoming is a fairly common occurrence, one such occurrence Thursday afternoon resulted in three Worland schools being sent into a lockout.

Washakie County School District No. 1 Superintendent David Nicholas said about 1 p.m. Thursday a citizen was seen carrying a rifle near the Worland Middle School.

“A school employee reported the incident and to be safe we went into a lockdown at the middle school, high school and South Side,” he said.

“A report was made to law enforcement and they investigated the situation. It was found to be innocent and harmless. In fact, it was a citizen carrying a rifle to a vehicle. As common as this event is to all of us who live here in Wyoming, we will continue to be cautious and report when we see firearms near the school,” Nicholas said.

Worland Chief of Police Gabe Elliott said the schools actually went into a lockout with the schools securing the exterior of the schools to make sure no one enters or exits and the schools are on alert.

“We take everything like that every seriously and we took the actions we needed to, to make sure everything was safe,” Elliott said.

Elliott said it was a man who was taking a rifle to his vehicle, en route to selling the firearm.

“Fortunately everything was cleared up rather quickly,” Elliott said.

Nicholas said the lockout lasted only about 20 minutes.

“Everything went really well. We’re always looking to improve on these areas,” Elliott said, adding that an event like this gives the schools and law enforcement an opportunity to “look at what we’re doing and make sure we’re following the procedures we need to.”