After a lockdown was announced at a Florida school, terrified middle school teachers and students heard voices and took cover as armed police stormed their classrooms.
“Our principal announced, ‘We are going to have a lockdown,'” seventh grade student Lauren Marionneaux told Fox affiliate WSVN-TV. “We actually thought someone was coming to kill us.”
But it was all just a drill.
The Winter Haven Police Department conducted the drill at Jewett Academy, with officers drawing loaded weapons, including an AR-15 rifle — which police say was not loaded.
The school is in Polk County, and district officials told WSVN that it is standard procedure not to give advanced warning of lockdown drills.
But in the age of smart phones, word quickly reached parents.
“Police came in with guns and I’m kinda scared,” Marionneaux texted her mom. A second text said: “I thought he was going to shoot me.”
Marionneaux’s mother, Stacy Ray, told WSVN that she was panicked.
“I thought a legitimate shooter was coming,” she said, adding that she wants to be notified of future drills. “So I can prepare my child for it, so she can know it’s a drill and not to stress out and not to get upset.”
Police Chief Charlie Bird said the element of surprise is an important factor in drills of this nature, WSVN reported.
“How you train and how you prepare is how you are going to react when everything goes bad,” he said.
But after all the hoopla over Thursday’s incident, future exercises “will be performed by uniformed officers without weapons,” Bird said in a statement.
WSVN-TV – 7NEWS Miami Ft. Lauderdale News, Weather, Deco
Sheila Jackson Lee gets offered matches
after vowing to set herself on fire for Obama
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The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.
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