I love red days. I mean seriously, I love coming to school on Red Days. I was walking with my boyfriend at the time to his class, which was World History, and I was walking to English. I was right outside the doors when a security guard grabbed me and told me to go into the library. Of course, I said in a stupid way, “Is my class in there?” Anyways, I heard someone yell really loud for everyone in the hallway to get into the library and there was a huge rush of kids coming up the stairs. I found a few of my friends and asked them what was going on. Along with everyone else, no one knew. We all got in there and everyone thought it was a drill, including me. I’ve gotten
my cell phone taken away a number of times, but after I found out this was real, I pulled it out and I started texting with about 11 different people. A few were even from other schools, telling me they were in lockdown too. After they announced that we were going to be evacuating, I got 4 phone calls. There were so many people in the library. Everyone saw police and SWAT outside in the hall. We were all so scared because of what happened with Virginia Tech.

I found out who reported it. My first thought was honestly that he was doing it for attention, but then I was thinking, “Who would seriously do that for attention?” We were all actually talking about it. How he could be making it up? But it’s not like we said anything to an adult or anything.

I think we were in the library for 3 hours. After we all got really bored, we all pulled out our phones and started taking pictures. Of course, everyone had to go to the bathroom and I saw a few people go in Gatorade bottles. It was weird, but when you gotta go, you gotta go.

I was in the very back corner of the library so I laid down next to a friend and I was probably half asleep when everyone started crowding toward the door. Honestly, I was so happy to be finally getting out of there. So we go
to the Civic Center and we’re seeing all our friends asking them if they’re okay and everything. We all crowd into the Civic Center and when Mr. Jones announced it was false, the whole auditorium moaned and gasped. It was so shocking. I’m just glad it was a hoax because that would have been really scary. My mom called me crying, and she even left work.

- Tierra

Two juniors interviewed a security guard, asking about his evaluation of the day’s events.
Interviewed by Tyler

There was me and a couple friends who had second hour off so we were sitting just hanging out when one of my friends said we had a lockdown; we all thought it was a drill because of the Virginia Tech incident but then we heard Norma the security guard say it wasn’t a drill. So we figured that they were bringing in the drug dogs but then all the security guards and a couple administrators were practically yelling “This is not a drill!” So we were basically pushed up the stairs into the library and we were told to sit down, stay down, and stay quiet.

About a minute after Mr. Jones said what was happening my phone started going off like crazy; I got texts from all my friends, calls from my family and friends, everything! But we weren’t supposed to use our phones, 10 people got theirs taken away. We had to stay quiet so my friends and I started painting each other’s nails…even the guys! And then we tried to read seeing how we were in the library but we were in the non-fiction section so there wasn’t much that we wanted to read.

We weren’t told much in the library or I at least couldn’t really hear it…some people were a little worried and others weren’t taking it very seriously…some made me really mad because if there had been a gun in the school we could’ve been in a lot of danger; a lot of people just would not shut their mouths.

There were a lot of rumors going around. When Mr. Jones first came over the intercom someone said that he sounded like he had a gun to his head, most of the rumors obviously were just people’s imaginations gone wild in a state of terror.

So most of the time was just sitting and waiting, sitting and waiting, and then they told us we were going to evacuate but we still had to sit and wait because they said we were the biggest group so they were going to take us last. Then a couple SWAT Team members and police officers came up to the library and then we just stood and waited. We finally started to leave the library and that’s when it hit most of us that we were in danger. Some still didn’t get it but for a lot of us when we saw the police and the SWAT Team we were worried; maybe not for ourselves but for someone, a little brother or sister, a friend, or a boyfriend or girlfriend.

We walked over to the Civic Center with one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of us. Then my friend called me and I was talking to her because she wasn’t there but she wanted to know if everyone was alright and what was going on. She had heard that whoever supposedly had a gun went into Central and when he was spotted he ran out and went to Stevens but he couldn’t get onto campus because there were already police officers there so he went to Western Dakota Tech and was supposedly arrested there. A few minutes afterwards we were told that the whole thing wasn’t even real. The entire auditorium went into an uproar. I heard almost everyone around me say “You’ve got to be kidding!” I want to know how someone could do that. Even if I could start something like that I would not be able to keep it going for almost four hours.

- Christine

So, yesterday there was a lock down.

It was really scary cause that was the first time I ever saw Mr. Jones run and be all freaked out. We were coming up to the door wondering why they were locked and stuff and then Mr. Jones came running up the door and started yelling at us to get to the library and stuff and we were getting like rushed up the stairs. So we sat there for about 9924334 hours (sums up to around 3) just being bored and talking and trying to sleep and trying to hear what people on the security guards walkie talkies were saying…so that we got all the information we possibly could. We couldn’t go anywhere near the wall of windows and we couldn’t go to the bathroom or anything. There was one kid that did his business in a Gatorade bottle and that was kind of weird.

When we were heading out to the Civic Center we had to hold on to the shoulders of the person in front of us and that was sort of hard cause my group would go all fast the slow then speed up again and it was sad.

We had 149 people in the library.

I don’t like the kid that did this. It was stupid. And I hope he feels terrible.

- Sarah (who, for the record, wanted to title it, “The Suspenseful Story of Sarah”)