From NewsOK
A vague nationwide bulletin meant for local schools as a warning to be vigilant caused hysteria Friday at Oklahoma City Community College, and a security guard who thought there could be a shooter on campus accidentally fired his gun in the library.
Students locked classroom doors, turned out the lights and lay behind their overturned desks to try to hide from a gunman they believed to be on campus.
After police said there was never a shooter and the scare was caused by a student employee using a “poor choice of words,” some students found the situation somewhat comical. Freshman Nick Donnell was not one of those students.
Donnell said he was outside as he watched some people run to their cars shouting about a shooter on campus while others argued it was a false alarm.
While he and two friends were trying to figure out what was going on, Donnell said he heard a loud bang and then a high-pitched whine as a bullet whizzed past his head and struck the building behind him.
“I don’t know how close it was, but it was close enough to hear the bullet,” Donnell said. “I’ve never heard anything like that in all my life. I can’t really describe it.”
Moments later as he and his friends sought cover behind a concrete wall, Donnell said he saw Oklahoma City police officers running toward them from the library area.
“They said it was a security guard who had an accidental discharge,” Donnell said. “They told us to go back in the library because it was clear, but the people in the library told us not to go in there, so we didn’t know what to do.”
According to the Oklahoma City police incident report, officers about 10:15 a.m. went to the fourth floor of the library in reference to an active shooter on campus. While they were sweeping the building, a campus security guard accidentally fired his unholstered weapon.
Details as to how the weapon fired were not immediately available. Oklahoma City police Capt. Patrick Stewart said a report would be made to the Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training, and OCCC would handle the personnel matters resulting from the accidental discharge.
Cordell Jordan, OCCC spokesman, said the guard is assigned to desk duty pending the outcome of the investigation.
Jordan said school was canceled for the day, but the Mountain West Conference swimming and diving championships continued in the campus aquatic center.
‘Poor choice of words’
Shortly before noon, police released information about the miscommunication that led to the chaos.The breakdown started with a bulletin sent to schools and college campuses by the Oklahoma Fusion Center, a state intelligence-sharing group that had forwarded a vague report from a cybertip submitted Thursday to the National Missing and Exploited Children’s Web site, Stewart said.
Oklahoma City Fusion Center Director Bryan Rizzi said the bulletin included a nonspecific threat that a school shooting might be possible but made no mention of Oklahoma.
“It didn’t indicate where or who, and it really wasn’t even a direct threat,” Rizzi said. “This person just made statements of concern and part of what we do is make people aware of threats like these.”
After OCCC received the bulletin, Stewart said, a student and part-time campus employee who was told of the subject matter began going to classrooms and notifying faculty members.
“She used the words there was a possible active shooter,” Stewart said. “That was misinterpreted, and therefore people thought there was an active shooter on campus. So it was a miscommunication of information and a poor choice of words by a student.”
A faculty member who asked not to be identified said she heard a fire alarm Friday morning but never received an intruder alarm.
She said students told her they were being evacuated. Even when they were outside, students weren’t taking the situation seriously because they didn’t know what was going on, the faculty member said.
When there is a report of a shooter on campus, Jordan said, the procedure is to send out alerts via the school phone system and through text messaging. Jordan admitted there was a problem Friday.
The errant fire alarm message left at least one group of high school students who were taking college classes unsupervised, student Sarah Geeslin said.
“We were in class, and our teacher thought it was over so she ran out, and these security guards pushed her into another room. And so me and my class were in there by ourselves, and we’re in high school,” Geeslin said. “And so we just turned off the lights and pushed down the tables … and we just stayed as quiet as we could for about 30 minutes.”
In another class, Dion Hill said he and a friend were preparing to try to save as many lives as they could.
“The PA system went off saying there was some sort of a gunman or something, so we shut off all the lights and turned off all the monitors and everything. We got under the tables,” Hill said.
Hill said he was watching both classroom doors and knew that if someone came in he was going to have to try to get the gun away from them however he could. He said he didn’t remember what everyone was doing.
“Honestly, there may have been some people praying, but I was just trying to figure out how to get us out of there,” he said.
