False alarm causes lockdown at Norphlet Elementary and Middle schools

Norphlet Middle and Elementary schools were put into lockdown Thursday after a false alarm of an active shooter threat was sent out to teachers and administration at the shared campus.

Sgt. Randall Gilbert with the Union County Sheriff’s Office said a teacher at Norphlet Elementary School accidentally notified them that an active shooter was present with an app that teachers have in case of emergency. The app, called the Rave Panic Button app, allows teachers to immediately notify each other of active shooter threats or other emergencies and is in use across the state.

Smackover-Norphlet Superintendent John Gross said he thought the teacher who accidentally set the alarm off was trying to install it onto their phone when the false alarm was triggered.

“If you don’t follow the directions just right … This is not the first time this has happened. It’s not unusual for this to happen,” Gross said.

Gross said the response to the alarm was appropriate from both law enforcement and those locked down at the school.

“Within six minutes, the school had police there. They were going through the halls,” Gross said. “There [were] not just a few police; there were a lot of police over there and they went all through the halls, they went through down to the classrooms. All the kids were in

their classrooms with the lights off. They were in lockdown.”

Gilbert said the schools remained in lockdown until the police had cleared the building. Gross said he was in Smackover when school administrators called to notify him of the false alarm, but he told them to stay in lockdown until the police had completed their sweep of the campus.

Parents were notified via Norphlet Elementary School’s PTO Facebook page. The school also uses an app called Remind 101 to notify parents of school events; however, it was not used in this case. Gross said in the future the school probably would use it if a similar incident were to occur.

“We had some people that should have been notified that weren’t, but we did have a whole group of police there and they were ready to go,” Gross said.

Gross said he plans to get all the teachers who wish to install the Panic Button app together to install it simultaneously. He said they will notify the police before they start to install them, in case another false alarm is triggered.

Gross said that despite the false alarm, it was good to see the prompt and thorough response from teachers, students and law enforcement.

“I couldn’t have asked for anything to work any better,” he said.