Hays Post

SYRACUSE — A patient threat prompted a brief lockdown of the Hamilton County Hospital in Syracuse on Thursday afternoon.

“The threat came by phone from a man in Oakley at one of our providers,” said Rob Rawlings, Hamilton County Hospital chief operations officer.

“Our staff initiated our emergency response protocol and locked-down the hospital until we were sure the patient was not in the area,” he said. “Law enforcement here and in Oakley worked well together to take care of the situation. We were only on lock-down for about 20 minutes.

The hospital CEO and I were actually out of town and our staff did an excellent job of following the planned procedures,” said Rawlings.

No arrests have been made in connection with the threat, according to Officer Ryan Leitner with the Oakley Police Department.

“We don’t plan to release names or anything else at this time,” he said.