School Lockdown

The school where I teach, Mauldin Middle School, was locked down at 3pm yesterday, October 5th, after a few teachers at the elementary school next door reported seeing a man in camouflage and something over his shoulder that looked like a gun at the edge of the woods behind the school. We all had to stay in our 6th period class until the police said it was okay to let us go home. They finally started to dismiss students at 4pm. But to orderly dismiss over 1,200 students in our school alone is craziness. Of course by that time, all the parents and buses for both schools were waiting in line to pick up their students. But just after 4:30 almost all of the students had been picked up.The crazy thing about it was that a teacher across the hall from my classroom had caught one of the PE teachers who is on duty at the end of the day and had a wakie talkie just like the administrators as she was waking through the hall. We were in our classrooms and, she had given her the scoop on what was going on. That was about 3:20 before we had a clue of anything. Then the substitute aid in our class got on the internet onto our local News channel 4. Seconds after he got on the site a brief report came on about our schools and then there was a live video coverage from the helicopters that were flying over our school right then. Then we could see the long line of cars and buses lined up down the road past both of our schools. They zoomed in on different areas in the parking lot and even cop cars in the subdivisions next door. I even was picking out my vehicle in the parking lot when it would be on that area of the property. They never did find any one after searching till late yesterday. Here are some links to our local newspaper and news station for reports, pictures and video footage.

For this first link, there is a photo gallery on the right side. The ninth pictures has Mr. Finch, the head teacher in my classroom, in it. He is the teacher on the left.
http://www.greenvilleonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061006/NEWS01/610060341/1004/NEWS01

On this site, there is a video on the right from the lockdown.
http://www.wyff4.com/video/10015377/index.html