Beaufort County holds active shooter simulation prior to start of school year
By Delayna Earley
The Island News
More than 400 first responders from Beaufort County, as well as employees from the Beaufort County School District and Beaufort Memorial Hospital, took part in a large-scale, multi-departmental active shooter training exercise on Thursday, August 3, 2023, in Beaufort.
Beaufort County public safety agencies have participated in active shooter training for 14 years, but this was the first year that a parent and student reunification scenario and a patient surge scenario at Beaufort Memorial Hospital were included in the training.
These active shooter training scenarios are planned by an active shooter working group where representatives from the different law enforcement entities, the fire department and emergency management services (EMS) come together to plan how they will respond if there is an active shooter or any other event that would cause them to lock down the schools.
According to Capt. Will Angelo, training coordinator with the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, they have always used the ALERT program, Advanced Law Enforcement Response Team, which has been adopted statewide.
“We take that program and then adapt it to what is best for Beaufort County,” Angelo said.
Angelo also said that the decision to include the Beaufort County School District and Beaufort Memorial Hospital was made after the false active shooter incident at Beaufort High School in Fall 2022.
He said it was decided that it was necessary to get everyone involved in the working group to plan and work through some of the weak points in Beaufort County’s response plan.
The working group spent around three and a half months planning the active shooter training exercise before executing it on Thursday.
The hope was that the training exercise would test the abilities of the school district to handle reunification, the hospital’s abilities to handle a patient surge and first responders’ ability to respond to and subdue an active shooter.
During the exercise, law enforcement and first responders responded to a simulated active shooter situation at Lady’s Island Middle School.
The situation was meant to be as realistic as possible to test what would happen in a real situation.
A deputy with the sheriff’s office pretended to be a middle school student who had been bullied and had retaliated against his bully by coming to school with a gun.
The simulated active shooter then barricaded himself in a room in the school and law enforcement worked to try and de-escalate the situation before he hurt any other students or himself, which according to Angelo, they were able to do.
Angelo said that they especially tried to address some of the weaknesses in their original plan that became clear following the incident last fall, like law enforcement’s ability to access barricaded classrooms and how to communicate better with parents to help the reunification process go more smoothly.
The more than 400 individuals who participated came from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, Beaufort Police Department, Town of Port Royal Police Department, Bluffton Police Department, University of South Carolina Beaufort Police Department, State and Federal public safety agencies, local military installations, City of Beaufort/Town of Port Royal Fire Department, Lady’s Island – St. Helena Fire District, Bluffton Township Fire District, Beaufort County Emergency Medical Services, Town of Hilton Head Island Government, Beaufort County School District and Beaufort Memorial Hospital.
“There are things that we need to tweak to make us faster, but considering how many people were involved, the exercise went really well,” Angelo said.
Teachers and administrators from the school district acted as students and parents during the simulation.
Angelo said they had originally thought to ask seniors to participate to complete their required volunteer hours, but they decided against it because they did not want to subject minors to a scenario such as this one before they head back to school for their last year of high school.
Before the training exercise on Thursday, the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office put out notifications to the community to let them know what would be happening to avoid any confusion or cause anyone to worry that there was a real emergency.
As Beaufort County Schools prepare to go back to class on August 21, parents are encouraged to review the information provided by the school district on their website in case of an emergency such as the one simulated on Thursday.
The information regarding Student Safety and Security can be found at https://www.beaufortschools.net/families/student-safety-security.
Delayna Earley lives in Beaufort with her husband, two children and Jack Russell. She formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She joined The Island News in 2022. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
