GRAND JUNCTION, Colo (KKCO) - Students of Pomona Elementary are home safe after reports of suspicious activity near the school put it on lockdown. School officials say they will now review the way the situation was handled -- but believe the right things did happen.

The Grand Junction Police Department says it's still trying to figure out if a threat against the school was real or not. Officers had received reports that a man carrying a gun was seen walking near the school. But real or not, parents say they're glad everyone took it seriously.

Pomona Elementary student Kianna Colaizzi says she was just about ready to go home from school when the principal made an announcement that it was on lockdown.

"We didn't know if it was a drill or anything like that," says Colaizzi.

But she and her classmates quickly learned that wasn't the case.

"Then we saw the police come into our classroom and we then knew it was really real," she says.

Colaizzi says nobody in the classroom was too scared and her teacher helped keep everyone calm.

"She kept telling us, I'm here and nothing is gonna happen," she says. "I won't let anything happen to you."

But outside the school, the parents waiting to pick their kids up were anything but calm.

"Obviously I panicked," says Tony Colaizzi, Kianna's father. "I was in shock."

"I turned around and asked this is just a drill, right?" says Linda Reed, whose grandson is a student at Pomona. "But just the expression on people's faces, you know, I thought this is serious."

For more than an hour they were forced to stand out in the cold, while police secured the area and escorted bus riders to their buses.

"The problem that we faced in this situation is that it occurred five minutes before school was to be let out," says Jeff Kirtland, spokesman for School District 51. "And at that point we had to stop everything."

Even though emotions were running high while they waited, parents say they're glad to see the school and police made sure things were 100 percent safe before they sounded the all clear.

"They did a great job," says Reed. "They came in and informed us to what was going on and it was wonderful."

"They took it serious and we thank them," says Tony Colaizzi.

After checking parents IDs, the students were released to them and everyone went home safe.

"It's a big relief, a wonderful relief," says Reed.

School officials say that's just how they hope a situation like this turns out.

"We need to evaluate this, we need to make sure everything actually worked the way we intended," says Kirtland. "At this point it's looked like it worked very well."

School District 51 says this is the first time in several years they've had a lockdown that kept students at school past the end of the day and required them to reunite the kids with their parents. They say they want to review how things went so they can be even better prepared should something like this happen again.