Stories of the Central Lockdown

I was just sitting down in the photography room before class when the announcement came on to go into lockdown. We moved over to the corner of the room and shut off all the lights. For the first 5-10 minutes we were pretty quiet but then there was nothing really going on so we started talking and moving around and then Mr. Jones came on the intercom saying that the teachers were going to receive an email in about 2 minutes. Our teacher never told us what the email said but he made us be quiet again and said that we needed to take this more seriously, that’s when I knew it wasn’t just a drill.

A little bit later Mr. Jones came back on the intercom and was telling us what was going on. About a minute after that is when everybody started getting text messages and phone calls from their parents and friends. At first we were trying to hide our phones but then after awhile we just didn’t care anymore, our teacher said we were going to tie up the phones lines with all the texting going on. I got a text message from my mom saying, “Hey I heard there are a bunch of cops at your school. Anything going on?” I told her that there was a guy that came into the school with a handgun and that the place was surrounded with cops. She wanted to make sure everyone was ok and to keep her informed. Then my dad called me and asked what was going on and if I was alright and to keep him updated. Then I started get text messages from friends from Douglas and Stevens and old friends that I don’t even talk to anymore asking what was going on.

Pretty soon, we started hearing a lot of rumors, like they found a gun on the 2^nd floor, Mr. Vernon got shot, and that there was a shot fired and Grandview Elementary. After sitting there for about an hour and a half we were starting to get bored so we laid down on the floor to get more comfortable and were listening to music and the news and watching movies on peoples iPods. Then at about a quarter to 11 Mr. Jones came back on the intercom and told us that the building was safe and we were going to start evacuating over to the civic center at 11 o’clock.

At 11:17 we heard the bell ring for 2^nd block to be over and about 10 minutes after that we saw the yearbook room light turn on. We were just sitting there watching the window waiting for them to come get us and all of a sudden you could see a guy pointing his gun in the room and shining his flashlight on everybody. That’s when I got scared and knew that it wasn’t just a joke. Then they walked and Mr. Murphy said “Its Mr. Murphy please let me in.” So we all started getting up and the guy in the S.W.A.T. uniform told us to stay there and he started talking about how we were going to line up single file with our hand on the shoulder of the person in front of us and we were going to walk out to the hallway and wait till we were all ready to head over to the civic center.

We had to make sure we were quiet in the halls and when we got outside everybody was loud talking about everything and looking at all the cop cars and seeing all the parents across the street. When we got into the civic center we went in sat in the stands and I kept getting calls from my parents and my sister and I was texting everyone but we didn’t get a lot of good service cause everyone was on their phones. At about 1:20 Mr. Jones came in and told us they found out it was fake. Everybody in the arena started yelling and getting mad but he said the good news was that we got to go home; everybody started cheering but then he said there was bad news: we might have to make up that day and that’s when everybody started getting mad again. He said they would be going back to unlock the school so students get their keys or whatever they needed. He finally let us out of there and our section was the first one out so we were out of there by 1:30.

- Stacy