"Attention, please!"
"Lockdown ... immediately ... shooter in the hallway ... keep all students in the classroom until further notice ... do not open the door until notified by an administrator or law enforcement ... shooters in the purple hallway!" the voice over the loud speaker urgently announced.
"Watch out! Watch out!" Pea Ridge Police Capt. Chris Olson yelled.
"The door on the right," School Resource Officer John Langham warned a co-worker.
"Go, go, go!" Olson said.
Police officers from Pea Ridge and Little Flock Police departments joined forces recently for an active shooter exercise preparing both law enforcement and educators for what to do in the event of an emergency.
"It went really well," said Pea Ridge Police Chief Ryan Walker.
"We appreciate the opportunity to work together on this," Little Flock Police Chief Jesse Martinez said.
Pea Ridge emergency personnel joined in the exercise, going into the classroom checking on those pretending to be shot. Capt. Jack Wassman, paramedic Scott Boyd, emergency medical technician Colten Tedford and first responder Jordan Hayes assessed patients identified by note cards stating the nature of their injuries after being invited into the building by police once the threat had been nullified.
Pea Ridge School Resource Officers John Langham and Tracy Reynolds joined Pea Ridge and Little Flock Police officers including Jeremy Wall, Shawn Hollis, Levi Wallace.
On a teacher in-service day when there were no students present, teachers, school administrators and law enforcement acted out the scenario involving Walker pretending to be a student shooter.
When instructing teachers, Walker told them to leave their classroom doors as they usually do -- whether locked or unlocked. Several teachers in one classroom, acting the part of students, placed a long table on its side and hid behind the table. Most teachers turned off the lights in their classrooms.
Loud shots rang out in the classroom, then the hallway in the first exercise. In the second, the shooter fired in the school office, disabling the office personnel. Another school staff member heard the shots and made the announcements for the lockdown.
Reynolds, the SRO assigned to the high school, was first on the scene, with police coming within three minutes -- the time it may take from notification to arrival for officers in town. As officers assessed the situation, they carefully entered the hallways, watching in front and behind, checking and "clearing" each classroom looking for the shooter and any accomplices.
Brass shell casings littered the floor.
Watching from behind a caution tape, school administrators took note of the activity. Jimmy Trotter and Billy Coburn, with Educational Operations Consultants, LLC, from Texas, observed. The two audited the school's safety measures a year ago and were on hand for another consultation.
School superintendent Rick Neal said: "I thought it went well. It gave us some issues to take a look at -- how we're doing certain things."
"I think everybody was pleased," he said adding that the safety auditors from Texas were pleased with the progress made over the past year. "We've improved a lot since last year."
Improvements include the enhanced security at the entrance to the Middle School.
"I thought it went very well. We look forward to working with them in the future. I think both the school and the police department learned from it," Walker said, adding, "It's easy to sit around a table and talk about it, but to actually get out and do it, brings new things to light."
General News on 10/07/2015