Active Shooter Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

11th Hour Campus Carry Amendments Fail

Del. Sean Hornbuckle, D-Cabell, proposed an amendment that would give campuses a housing option for students who do not want those with firearms living in the building.

Opponents of the contentious Senate Bill 10, the Campus Self-Defense Bill, which would allow the concealed carry of firearms on college campuses (with limitations), tried to get two 11th hour exemption amendments passed.

Resigned to the fact that the campus carry bill has overwhelming legislative support, Del. Sean Hornbuckle, D-Cabell, proposed an amendment that would give campuses a housing option for students who do not want those with firearms living in the building.

“There are some students, they’re going to say no, we don’t want to go to West Virginia, Marshall, Concord, Fairmont. So, we’re going to work with our legislature, and we’re going to give you reasonable living accommodations too,” Hornbuckle said. “We’re not going to lose any money from tuition by turning students away. Matter of fact, we’re going to be more marketable. We’re going to be able to go out across the country and we’re going to be able to appease every single student. If you’re somebody who wants to live with firearms in your residence halls, we will allow you to do that. If you’re the student that just doesn’t feel right. Well, we will make reasonable accommodations.”

Del. Moore Capito, R- Kanawha, said campuses already had that option under the proposed law and Hornbuckle’s amendment failed.

Del. Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia, proposed an amendment striking the provisional carry permit which would not allow 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds to have a gun on campus, saying those students had not gained the maturity to carry firearms.

“Suicide among teenagers is an issue in West Virginia, and one that I think we need to pay attention to and this bill is relevant to this amendment, because it’s tough for kids who are going to school for the first time,” Hansen said. “Seventeen-year-olds, 18-year-olds, so many kids on campus haven’t spent a substantial amount of time away from home before. They’re meeting new people from different walks of life, they may or may not agree with them. They’re under a lot of stress, trying to study and get good grades. And there’s a mental health crisis at our universities.”

Del. Bill Ridenhour, R-Jefferson, a former Marine, said he put his life and trust in the hands of many 18- and 19-year-olds and they should have the legal right for concealed carry.

Hansen said Marine firearms training was vastly different from student firearms training but his amendment was also defeated.

Senate Bill 10 comes up for third reading Tuesday in the House.

Department of Homeland Security Updates School Swatting Incidents

Law enforcement has updated the number of schools targeted during Wednesday’s statewide false reporting incident.

The West Virginia Department of Homeland Security was monitoring at least a dozen false reports of active shooters at schools across the state Wednesday.

Thursday morning, that number was updated to 19 false reports across 17 counties, but officials reiterated that all calls received have been deemed not credible.

False threats were received in Barbour, Berkeley, Cabell, Greenbrier, Hancock, Harrison, Jefferson, Kanawha, Marion, McDowell, Mercer, Monongalia, Ohio, Raleigh, Randolph, Taylor, and Wood counties.

These types of false reports, commonly referred to as “swatting,” are an attempt to bring a large, armed law enforcement presence to a certain location.

Swatting ties up emergency services and can be deadly.

“Our ongoing priority is to ensure the health, safety and well-being of our students and communities,” said Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Rob Cunningham. “We will continue our investigation of each event and are prepared to respond again if needed. We ask the community to download our emergency response phone app and assist us in keeping our communities safe.”

Homeland Security officials said each threat received is being investigated alongside local and federal authorities.

False Reports Of Active Shooters Made At Schools Across State

More than a dozen false reports of active shooters were made at schools across the state Wednesday. The incident is part of a growing national trend.

Law enforcement in Barbour, Cabell, Harrison, Ohio, Kanawha, Marion, Mercer, Monongalia, Raleigh, Taylor, Wirt and Wood counties all received calls Wednesday morning of active shooters in schools, or the imminent threat of an active shooter.

Morgantown police, who responded to a false call at Morgantown High School around 9 a.m., said in a press release that an unidentified male identifying himself as a teacher at the school called 911 and said seven students had been shot in his classroom.

Deputy Cabinet Secretary for the West Virginia Department of Homeland Security Rob Cunningham says false or not, the safety of students in schools is a top priority and law enforcement responded to all involved locations quickly.

“Every time that there’s a threat, or there’s an allegation that there’s going to be some sort of violence towards our children, we take them all dead serious,” he said.

Cunningham said the calls, known colloquially as ‘swatting’, follow a growing pattern across the country.

“This isn’t only happening in the state of West Virginia, these types of calls have been happening throughout the nation,” he said.

Cunningham confirmed that similar calls were made simultaneously in Ohio Wednesday morning. Schools in North Carolina were targeted with similar false claims last week. He said the West Virginia incidents are now part of a federal investigation.

“My conversation with the FBI this morning was that these sorts of events have been happening throughout the nation and what is happening in West Virginia is going to be elevated to a national level investigation,” Cunningham said.

The false reporting of an emergency incident is a misdemeanor in West Virginia and carries a fine of up to $500 or a six month jail sentence.

Cunningham highlighted the state’s new “SeeSend” phone app, which allows community members to report information and concerns, and could help mitigate false reporting moving forward.

“If they have information, they have a tip, they know of something that’s going to negatively affect a school or a child, you can send that information and it goes straight to the people that it needs to go to to create an immediate response,” he said.

Marshall to Hold Training on Active Shooter Response

Marshall University is conducting three training sessions this month on responding to an active shooter.

The university says director of public safety Jim Terry and director of health and safety Tracy Smith will conduct hour-long sessions Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in the Memorial Student Center on the Huntington campus.

Those in attendance will receive a flipchart that provides emergency response references.

Monday’s session will be shown and archived at www.marshall.edu/it/livestream .

Should Universities Do More to Prepare Students, Staff for an Active Shooter Emergency?

What would you do if an active shooter entered your building?

University police departments across the country and West Virginia are encouraging their students and staff to answer that question by providing them training in the form of videos, which are provided by entities like the Department of Homeland Security and private companies. Marshall University, for example, rolled out an online video module this fall that students and employees can access to learn about how to survive an active shooter situation, and West Virginia University opened their video training, which is taught in a class setting and followed by a question and answer session, to the public.

“It’s video clips tied in with some PowerPoint slides – that’s how we deliver a lot of our emergency management training,” said Tracy Smith, the director of Environmental Health and Safety at Marshall University. “That way we can reach large numbers of people pretty easily.”

But one terrorism expert with the Ohio Department of Homeland Security thinks the nation is not doing enough to prepare civilians for an active shooter emergency.

“You’re not engraining someone in having them watch a video. I pull people out of the audience,” said Lieutenant Joseph Hendry. “We barricade the doors in a classroom. I show them how to use countermeasures. I show them swarming techniques. I show them how to move. We are so behind the terrorists and active shooters in training and thought process. That’s why we keep losing so many people.”

Hendry says that the only way to be prepared is to drill repeatedly. But requiring drills is a matter of bureaucracy, and police departments throughout the country often copy each other’s policies for the sake of expediency. Fire drills and fire codes, after all, took 64 years to implement. By now, some active shooter training methods are outdated. The lockdown method, in which individuals hide under desks and turn off the light, was designed for a drive-by shooting at an outdoor campus in 1993. In shootings that occur indoors, Hendry says lockdown training is the reason why mass-shooting victims are often killed by execution-style shots – they are sitting ducks for the gunman.

“There are states that require lockdown drills five times a year. So by the time someone comes to a university setting, they may have practiced sitting in the dark on the ground not moving 65 times,” he said. “That is an ingrained thought process in them. they will do that automatically – and at a stress level, you will default to the level of your training.”

Police departments at Marshall, Shepherd and West Virginia universities use videos for training because they say physical training with their students and staff could be traumatic and impractical. Captain Danny Camden of West Virginia University Police says the videos are a good way to prompt audiences to seriously think about what they would do if confronted with an active shooter, and brings them one step closer to surviving an active shooter emergency.

“If you’ve never watched a video, if you’ve never done anything and and never stopped to think about what if this happens, or that happens, you’re at a huge disadvantage. You could very easily find yourself just like the deer that jumps into the road and here comes a car at night head on. Should you jump left? Should the deer jump right?” he said. “Well, it doesn’t really matter if you jump left or jump right. Just don’t stand there too long.”