Active Shooter Exercise Held at High School

The Jasper County Sheriff’s Office, Emergency Medical Service, Fire Department/First Responders and Emergency Management Agency participated in a mock shooter exercise Saturday at Jasper County High School.

All county schools had representatives on hand to observe and discuss the exercise and response to the call of a gunman at the school.

Clint Westbrook, school safety specialist with the Georgia Emergency Management Agency assisted in the exercise.

“Victims” were members of the sheriff’s office Explorers group and included Kellie Evans, Cole Usry, Ryan Nelson, Brianna Martin, Parker Grey, Dylan Cox, Brian Cumbess, Andrew Lentini, and Zack Bowman. Of the “victims” who had survivable wounds, all survived based on the exercise. One shooter and two victims were declared dead at the scene. Another shooter was taken into custody.

The exercise was a practice in a new way of taking action. In the past, the school would have to be completely secure before medics would come in, possibly resulting in the unnecessary loss of lives. By training together, once the shooters were disarmed, the victims were moved from the “hot” zone to a “warm” zone where medics could take care of them. In this scenario triage took place in the front office of the school.

Sheriff Donnie Pope stressed that even though we are rural middle Georgia, it could happen here. We all hope it doesn’t but that emergency officials need to be prepared.

In the assembly after the exercise, Captain Mike Steele of the JCSO, reminded everyone that this was an exercise. In real life there would be lost of yelling, crying, smoke in the air, total chaos. This was the first effort to bring together all the emergency officials to practice a drill like this.