Hillcrest Elementary School and Oak Harbor High School were locked down for approximately 45 minutes Thursday morning while police searched for a suspicious person near both schools.

At approximately 10 a.m. an Oak Harbor police officer approached a man parked alongside Heller Road to ask him about a stolen car.

The man bolted west into nearby woods when the officer pulled behind his car, said Capt. Rick Wallace of the Oak Harbor Police Department.

Once the man hid in the woods, the police called Hillcrest Elementary School and asked staff to secure the school as a safety precaution, Wallace said.

“We didn’t think there was a potential for him to go into the school,” Wallace said.

Oak Harbor High School soon became involved in the lockout.

Joe Hunt, spokesperson for the Oak Harbor School District, said staff locked all the entrances to Hillcrest Elementary School and covered all of the windows. He said kids could walk through the building and could go to the bathroom during the lockdown.

At the high school, the school went into full lockdown at which time classrooms were locked. That soon changed to a partial lockdown in which all of the outdoor exits remained locked, Hunt said. That can be problematic because many of the classes on the campus exit outside.

While both schools were locked down, police officers searched the woods but didn’t find the man, Wallace said.