East High principal answers questions about gun incident

Courtney Orton reporting When a man got inside East High School with a gun Wednesday morning the school was not put on lockdown and students and parents were not notified. Eyewitness News received several calls from parents concerned about the way the school handled the situation, so we went back to the school to get answers.

In hindsight, the school says it would have communicated better with students and parents. However, officials stand by the way they handled the situation.

"I was concerned, as a parent, that we didn't know, but more concerned about what the measures were by the administration at that time. We have to have faith that they've been trained in these kind of events," said parent Molly Wetzel.

East High School Principal Paul Sagers said by the time he was alerted of the situation Wednesday morning, the man caught on the surveillance video had left the building. He says at that point there was no imminent threat to students and no need to go into lockdown mode.

"What we did do is call dispatch because we wanted the neighboring schools to know that he was out and about. We wanted UTA to know. We wanted the community to know," Sagers explained.

Sagers said if the man would have stayed in the building, they would have followed lockdown procedure. "The teachers would have known exactly what to do. They would have locked their doors. The students would have gone into the nearest location. If they were out in the halls, we would have then gone through a canvassing procedure where everybody would have known where to go," he said.

The intruder entered the school through the northeast door. It's normally locked, but on Wednesday the door had been propped open with a garbage can. From now on, the school says campus security will check doors more often through outdoor perimeter checks.

The school also hopes to get more surveillance cameras to add to the 26 they already have.

"I don't think we can be overly cautious. I think we need to step up our preventative measures, definitely," Wetzel said.

The school plans to include an article on this incident and safety procedures in this month's newsletter. They will also discuss it at a planned School Community Council Meeting next Thursday.

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