Reply to lockdown at ES track meet; students all okay

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]When gunshots were first heard, the kids either took cover under the bleachers, ran into the lock room or bathroom, or took cover by a wall along the track.  The track meet had not started yet.  It was about to start in the next 15 minutes or so.

After the gunfire subsided, the kids were all brought out to the field to line up and get accounted for.[/quote]

The West track meet had not started yet - the East track meet was on its last few events. The kids who were on the far side of the track lining up for the races were told by adults to run into the nearby trees. The adults present did as well as possible under the circumstances, but it was awful. The locker rooms and bathrooms were packed and many team members were separated from one another. It was an experience no kid or adult should have to live through.

What I don’t understand is why, with teams from 28 elementary schools present, the city couldn’t assign one or two police cars to sit at the end of the block or in front of the entrance for the duration of the event. “Security” was doing bag checks but I don’t even know if they were equipped to handle a weapon if they found one. (No blame to the security officers who were just doing their jobs but there should have been police on site.) [/quote]

It reminds me a bit of the shooting at Potomac Ave, Metro a few years ago when the Metro worker was shot and killed. A group of elementary students were on the way to that metro for a field trip and fortunately we’re not there yet.
It was super scary thinking about what could’ve happened but also it seems like something that was hard to predict and would have been hard to prevent. From what I read in the news yesterday, the shots were fired from someone driving by in a car toward someone on the sidewalk correct? If there were police on the street, they would not have been stopping and inspecting cars and the security at the event would not have been able to prevent it either.

The amount of guns and frequency of use is terrifying and is the actual problem that is much more complex.[/quote]

A car was trailing the victim. It stopped right in front of the track, 3 men got out and started shooting. I would like to think a police car within the block would have been a deterrent for them to choose another location, even if still nearby (although with the way of things the last few years, who knows). If what previous posters said is true about the frequency of violence in the area, then it isn’t that much of a stretch to realize police might be a good idea when bringing in 100s of kids to spend hours right out in a big open area. 
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