University of North Carolina Faces Backlash Over Response to Active Shooter Emergency
Micah Baldonado sobbed quietly at his desk as his teacher continued the lesson as sirens wailed across the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and cell phones lit up with signals of an active shooter.
The Charlotte senior claimed that during a three-hour lockdown and police manhunt on August 28 that ended with the arrest of a UNC graduate student, rumors swiftly traveled across campus.
In relation to the shooting death of associate professor Zijie Yan inside a science building, Tailei Qi, 34, is being jailed without bond on charges of first-degree murder and possessing a gun on school property.
Baldonado, amid what he called an information vacuum, spent hours reading news articles and listening to the police scanner from inside his sealed classroom. He is one of many pupils who have expressed concerns about the school’s preparation, communication, and staff response.
The biomedical engineering student roamed campus with a poster board to collect signatures for his petition, which calls for quick and significant revisions to the active shooter response strategy that university officials claim has been successful.
The majority of lecture halls and classrooms have QR codes for quick access to emergency instructions, and all employees and resident advisers frequently practice drills, the chancellor said during a press conference.
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UNC Campus Alert System
According to UNC Police Chief Brian James, two minutes after a 911 call reporting gunfire inside Caudill Labs at 1:12 p.m., a mass electronic alert and siren alerted the campus to the incident. James reported that Qi was in custody at 2:31 PM.
However, an update from the campus alert system at 3:43 p.m. stated that the suspect was still on the loose. James said that at the time of the alert, police were still checking to make sure they had the appropriate individual in custody and that there was no collaborator.
Hundreds of perplexed students were seen leaving buildings without clear instructions by an Associated Press reporter who was on campus during the lockdown before a “all clear” message was received at 4:14 p.m.
Unsure of where to go, several were left crying and contacting their parents from sidewalks. “Resume normal activities,” stated the final all-clear message. Until a press statement at 5:20 p.m., UNC did not publicly acknowledge that police had a suspect in custody.
Although campus police didn’t give the all-clear until more than 90 minutes after Qi’s arrest, he claimed that it could have been more hazardous to release insufficient information about the suspect’s capture at a time when authorities weren’t yet confident they had everything under control.
According to Amweg, campus police seem to have responsibly withheld information about the quickly evolving situation until they were certain it was contained and the specifics had been confirmed.
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Source: ABC News
