Temple Police Officers, EMTs, and other safety officials trained for an unexpected emergency at Barton Hall Wednesday morning.
Officials participated in an active-shooter scenario to which actors reenacted a shooting scene in Barton Hall. The shooter was played by a white male wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, cargo pants, and a black backpack enshrined with the Temple “T”. He entered Barton Hall using the Liacouras Walk entrance and opened fire, without using real ammunition.
Actors playing students and professors were helped and carried out of the building by Temple Police to where they were immediately treated by both Temple and Drexel University student EMTs.
Charles Leone, Executive Director of Campus Safety Services, says it is crucial officers and other university safety officials take part in the exercise.
“When you see this in real life, and you see things are happening around the nation, even around the world, we want to make sure that we’re at the top of our game with training.” He said.
“Our goal now is to educate and prepare our students, our faculty, and our staff, and what to do in situations like this.”
Preparations for the exercise began around 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, while the active-shooter scenario started at 10 a.m. and lasted until just after 11 a.m.
Sarah Paranich, Associate Director of Temple University Emergency Medical Service (EMS) was impressed with how her group of EMTs handled the training.
“We were trying to plan for as many of the unknown things that we could’ve and, I think it went off without a hitch — it went really well.”
“We don’t want to get the phone call saying, hey, we’ve got an active shooter and have a whole bunch of people running around and not knowing what to do.” She said.
Leone said he, too, was impressed with the response of the officials during the training exercise and has plans for other training initiatives, including different scenarios, in the near future.
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