By Lanie Callaghan, Jake Razo and McKinzie Mangers, Editors
The intercom buzzed, and students looked up from their books.
“We are going into a hard lockdown,” Principal Chip Hickman announced.
All over the building, classrooms doors slammed shut. Blinds went down. In some rooms, students crouched under desks with the lights off. In other classrooms, teachers continued teaching, simply barring their doors.
Students in Kurt Green’s speech class in A209 were among those who hid under the tables.
“Mr. Green told everyone to go up against the wall and under the tables,” sophomore Alexa Certa, who was in class at the time, said. “Everyone was freaking out.”
In an age where school shootings regularly make the news, and at a school just 14 miles from Northern Illinois University, the scene of one of the worst shootings in recent memory, it was a scary moment for some.
“I automatically thought of Colombine,” sophomore Nelly Sepulveda said.
Sepulveda wasn’t alone. Ten percent of Kaneland students said that they were scared during the lockdown, a Krier poll of 201 students on Oct. 18 found.
Teachers were caught off guard, The fire drill that morning had been planned in advance. The lockdown, they knew, was not a drill.
Students had no idea what had happened. Text messages flew back and forth, with 53 percent of students polled texting friends or family, trying to figure out what was going on.
“I was just wondering what was going on and if it was a drill or not,” freshman Elise Fichtel said.
Some were worried. Some weren’t. Senior Brittney Boettcher said she wondered “is it real?,” while senior Jessica Martinez was more nonchalant.
“I didn’t really care,” Martinez said. “I knew nothing was serious because nothing ever happens at this boring school.”
It wasn’t quite nothing—bullet casings had been found in the halls of Kaneland High School, and initially, no one knew that they were only from a track starter pistol or where they’d come from.
“The understanding from the administration was that the bullets were scattered in the hallways,” superintendent Jeff Schuler said. “[The administration] couldn’t identify what type of casing they were at first, so the administration didn’t know if they were potentially dangerous.”
Since the situation might’ve been dangerous, administrators decided to put the school in a “hard lockdown”—something that confused students and teachers because it was a term many had never heard before.
CONFUSION REIGNED
Upperclassmen remembered drills where they’d practiced a Code Black lockdown, which takes place when a “serious event” that might threaten students’ well being, such as a potential shooting, is imminent, but none had ever heard the term “hard lockdown.”
The terms had changed last year, Schuler explained, and the term “hard lockdown” was no longer used.
“There used to be different types of lockdowns, but there aren’t different types anymore because if we need to go into a lockdown, we just go into a lockdown,” he said.
Hickman sent e-mails to teachers briefing them on the situation, but they were instructed to keep the details confidential as the investigation proceeded.
Administrators, staff and police were on the case, Schuler said.
Officers from the Kane County Sherriff’s department came out to assist, while Officer Keith Gardner, the school’s resource officer from the sherriff’s department, led the investigation.
“Officer Gardner is a full-time officer, so he quickly identified where the bullets had come from,” Schuler said.
Gardner identified the bullet casings as being from starter pistols used at track meets. Hundreds of casings are strewn around the track outside the high school, the remnants of hundreds of track races over the years.
Yet the investigation didn’t stop there—police and administrators alike wanted to be sure that the building was safe before releasing students from lockdown.
The sherriff’s office brought five trained dogs in to sniff out ammunition. The officers and canine units searched the buildings, sniffing lockers and other areas, for telltale scents like gunpowder. Nothing was found.
Rumors were spreading like a cold in winter, and Schuler’s phone was ringing constantly. Within 20 minutes, parents were calling and wanting to take their children out of school.
A COPYCAT?
One of the rumors that began circulating immediately among students was that it was a copycat incident, similar to the one that had happened just a week before at St. Charles North, roughly 16 miles east of KHS.
Senior John Michek said his first thoughts went to the incident at St. Charles, which had led to school being cancelled there.
“[I was] a little disgusted after hearing about what happened in St. Charles,” Michek said.
Schuler said that the situations at Kaneland and St. Charles were different and St. Charles experienced a more serious event.
“In my understanding, St. Charles North found real bullets that had not been fired, not casings from bullets,” Schuler said.
St. Charles North was locked down at 11:50 a.m. on Sept. 29, when students were told they were not allowed to leave their classes. Students knew there were search dogs in the building, but even after the dogs left, students were still not allowed to leave classrooms.
“[We were told] we were in lockdown for drugs, when the girl sitting next to me in class got a text from her mom saying that they found a bullet,” Corrine Sullivan, a sophomore at St. Charles North, said.
A dean arrived in Sullivan’s class at the end of the period telling the class that they were to evacuate.
“It just happened randomly. It came on the announcements that there was a security problem, and we needed to evacuate,” St. Charles North sophomore Alexa Johnson-Roach said.
Though students were sent home, they were only permitted to take personal belongings—they had to leave their backpacks and bags behind to be searched by bomb-sniffing dogs looking for weapons.
Kaneland never considered cancelling school, Schuler said.
“It was a different situation. As soon as [administration] identified there wasn’t a dangerous situation, it was not necessary [to release students],” Schuler said.
“The situation was under control, and often students are a source of information,” he said. “If they went home, it would take more time to get things settled.”
ROLE OF STUDENTS
Who brought the pistol casings into KHS has not been released, but it wasn’t a copycat incident and no one was trying to get school cancelled. Schuler said there was no reason to worry.
“[Administration] does not believe there was any intent to do harm or create panic,” Schuler said.
He said the texts, rumors, inaccurate Facebook posts and parent phone calls had made the situation more complicated than necessary.
“Students need to respond to what adults are asking them to do in that moment,” Schuler said.
The district didn’t immediately send out a phone blast to parents, he said, because they didn’t want to scare people or have parents showing up and trying to take students out of school.
“In my mind, it brings parents to the problem when there is a mass phone call, like when we have snow days telling parents that their kids need to be picked up or they will be coming home early via bus,” Schuler said.
Parents received e-mails about what had happened, similar to the announcement students heard at the end of the day.
“I think they did a great job by not scaring people but still letting us know what happened,” freshman Andera Halsey said.