MORRISTOWN, Tenn. — Staff at Morristown-Hamblen High School West said over-preparedness helped them deal with a shooting that broke out just across the street from the school.
"We hope we never have to do it again," Tim Landefeld, the school's assistant principal, said. "But if it does happen again, I have confidence that we will be prepared to handle whatever comes our way."
The shooting where a 17-year old Hamblen County Schools student shot another 17-year old student from the same school district happened last week. School leaders, like Landefeld are now spreading the word on how important it is to take school safety trainings seriously.
"When we arrived on the scene, we made a couple of radio calls to folks in our building to call 911," he said. "What was amazing to me is that within 97 seconds of the first 911 phone call, the first police officer arrived on the scene. That is less than two minutes."
Landefeld said they have constant trainings with all of the emergency services in town including police, the fire department and emergency services.
"We put ourselves through some very difficult situations and we work through them to see how we would respond, what are our weaknesses, what are our strengths," Landefeld said.
School resource officer Sam Swatzell is one of around 120 staff members who sits on those trainings.
Swatzell pointed out how this shooting near Morristown-Hamblen West was not the typical situation: on this occasion, the threat was coming from outside of the school instead of the inside. Aside from that, the shooting happened just after 3 p.m. when school was dismissing.
"We already had students outside," he said. "The school was wide open, so when that happened, we had to try to get the kids that were on the front area back into the building, into classrooms where we knew they would be safe, and then trying to coordinate and let everyone know where they were needed, which is a very large step when you have that many resources pouring into a situation."
Even though this situation was not particularly similar to the ones they had trained for, Swatzell said they were able to implement many of the things they had already learned in the drills.
And because constant training has now been proven to work for Morristown-Hamblen High School West staff, Landefeld wants others to take their school safety trainings seriously.
"But when things do get difficult, give yourself some grace," Landefeld said. "Because you never really know how you are going to respond in a circumstance that is that adverse."