WINTER HAVEN, Fla. (WSVN) — Students and staff at a Florida middle school were terrified after their local police conducted a lockdown drill using full force and real weapons, failing to notify the school beforehand.
Classes were disrupted at a middle school in Winter Haven Thursday morning by an announcement from the front office. “Our principal announced, ‘We are going to have a lockdown,'” said seventh grade student Lauren Marionneaux.
Students and teachers took cover, hiding in their classrooms. Then, they heard voices. “We actually thought someone was coming to kill us,” said Marionneaux.
Police burst into the room with guns drawn. One of the weapons was an AR-15 rifle. “They were holding it like this, and then they walked in and they had risen it and they were like this,” said Marionneaux.
Frightened by it all, Marionneaux texted her mom. One of the messages read, “Police came in with guns and I’m kinda scared.” Another read, “I thought he was going to shoot me.”
“I’m panicking,” said Marionneaux’s mother, Stacy Ray. “I thought a legitimate shooter was coming.”
But that wasn’t the case. It was all a drill. However, teachers, students and parents were never notified ahead of time.
Many were upset. “It’s very scary, especially from a parent’s perspective,” said Ray. “You hear these things on the news, and you think it might be happening at your child’s school.”
Polk County school officials said it is standard procedure not to give advanced warning before a drill.
Police said they prefer the element of surprise so they could evaluate and ultimately improve the school’s reaction. “How you train and how you prepare is how you are going to react when everything goes bad,” said Winter Haven Police Chief Charlie Bird.
However, Ray said having a weapon drawn at the kids was too extreme, and she wanted a head’s up. “So I can prepare my child for it, so she can know it’s a drill and not to stress out and not to get upset,” she said
To ease the minds of the upset parents, the police chief issued a statement explaining a change in policy. It read in part, “Further lockdown drills that occur at schools within the city limits of Winter Haven will be performed by uniformed officers without weapons.”
Police stated nobody was ever in any danger during the drill.