This made for a super eventful Tuesday afternoon.
Police and panicked parents scrambled to Heights High School Tuesday afternoon, in frantic response to a false report that a gunman had shot 10 people in a room on the 2,400-student Houston ISD campus.
The school went into lock down around 1 p.m., and police officers found the room locked and immediately breached the door, according to Chief Troy Finner. Two sweeps of the school found nothing, according to the Houston Police Department.
“We have no injuries here,” Finner said at a news briefing as a crowd of parents stood at an intersection near the high school. “Thank god for that.”
Officials intend to determine who made the hoax call and hold that person accountable. Finner said police believe the call may have come from outside the school.
“There was no active shooter here — there was a fight,” said Constable Alan Rosen.
An email notified parents later that Heights High, as well as nearby Hogg Middle and Harvard and Travis Elementary schools, were placed in lockdown.
“As a precautionary measure, we went into lockdown mode,” Heights Principal Wendy Hampton said in an email to parents. “Houston Police Department and HISD Police are onsite and continue to investigate, though no evidence has been found to substantiate the threat. We take all threats seriously as the safety of our students and staff is always our top priority.”
As it happens, I had to go into the office Tuesday afternoon. I was headed out a little after 1 PM, and was on Studewood going towards the I-10 entrance when I saw three HPD cars with lights and sirens going headed the other way at full speed. I didn’t give it much thought until after I had arrived at the office, took a minute to check Twitter, and found out what was happening. I don’t currently have any kids at Heights or the other schools that got locked down, but my kids have friends there and I have friends and neighbors who have kids at all of them. It was pretty stressful, to say the least, and I had the luxury of not having to be frantic about my own kids. My thoughts today remain with those parents and those kids.
Shannon Velasquez burst into tears on Tuesday afternoon as she waited on the sidewalk near Heights High School, where her daughter and hundreds more students were locked down in their classrooms after someone made a false report about a mass shooting.
The mother knew her daughter was fine — she had spoken with the sophomore student on FaceTime as she sped to school from work.
Still, she could not shake a horrible feeling, and her frustration bubbled over as she heard conflicting information from parents and officers about where she should go to reunite with her child.
“As if this isn’t bad enough?” she said. “I just can’t wait to put my arms around my kid.”
Anxiety, panic and confusion erupted on Tuesday afternoon in the residential streets surrounding Heights High School. Personnel from at least eight law enforcement agencies sped to the scene with lights and sirens. Panicked parents rushed from jobs and lunch appointments. Some drivers ditched their cars on the grassy median along Heights Boulevard, and walked or ran several blocks to the school.
Parents gathered information from their children, other parents, news reports and officials — eventually learning that their kids were safe and the massive frenzy actually stemmed from a false alarm.
Still, some parents said they were frustrated by sparse communication from the school, district or law enforcement agencies, although HISD and law enforcement agencies have defended their response.
[…]
Luis Morales, HISD spokesman, said notifications went out to parents 23 minutes after the district became aware of the situation.
“We were able to get that out a quicker than we have before,” Morales said, adding that the district must verify information before sending out notifications.
Chief Troy Finner said during a news briefing on Tuesday afternoon that he sympathized with parents who were frustrated. But safety comes before notifications, he said.
“We have to search the school. That is the most important thing — to stop the threat if there’s a threat,” he said. “We don’t have time to call. Once we make it safe, we start making those calls.”
Houston Fire Chief Samuel Pena said more than two dozen units from HFD responded to the scene. The first unit arrived two minutes after HFD received the call, he said, and quickly began coordinating a rescue team with police.
“The community expects the first responders to get on scene quickly, to get on scene and coordinate and start taking action as soon as they get on scene,” he said. “That’s exactly what we did.”
I have nothing but sympathy for the parents here. I was scrambling around looking for accurate information too, and the stakes were much lower for me. I have no doubt I’d have been out of my mind and super upset at how long it took to get updates. I also have a lot of sympathy for HISD and HPD, who were understandably reluctant to get out ahead of what they knew. I don’t have a good answer for this.
As relieved as we all are that this turned out to be nothing, we have to talk about the law enforcement response, since that is an obvious item of interest after Uvalde. In addition to HPD, there were deputies from the Precinct 1 Constable and the Sheriff’s office at the scene, and I assume there were some HISD cops as well. We do know that HPD entered Heights HS in search of the alleged shooter, which is good to know, but we don’t know more than that about who was in charge and who was making what decisions. Given what we know about the thoroughly botched response in Uvalde, this should be used as an opportunity for HPD and HISD to review their processes, make sure they have agreements in place, and so on. In the end, thankfully this was just a drill. We damn well better learn from it.
Would there have been sufficient EMS personnel available for something so random and unexpected? How many paramedics would have been available at that time and location? Would they be a new hire handling a massive incident, when they’re still getting their feet wet, or are those paramedics the seasoned paramedics, with years of experience? Which paramedic would you want on staff, serving your family?
Would those that arrived be fresh, or would they have already worked 24, 48, or 72 hours before a situation like this even occurred? If you don’t have these answers, press your city council members until you get the answers you want, because all of this information is available. Thank God no one was hurt.
David, you appear to forget you/me live in a city that has, in all likelihood, more medical facilities and medical services per capita that any other city in the US (FFS, the TMC employs over 100K, and there two Level 1 Trauma Centers within 20 mins of HHS, one of which is the busiest in the US). Would there have been sufficient EMS personnel available ? They may have had to call the HFD guys wandering the aisles of the Studewood Kroger a mile away for assistance, but I’m pretty sure there was no shortage of immediately available first responders.
I would add that I think active shooter *drills* are themselves child abuse.
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