New Panic Buttons Worn By Ga. Teachers Likely Saved Lives In School Shooting: Authorities
Panic buttons worn by teachers during Wednesday’s school shooting in Winder, Georgia, are being credited with likely saving lives after they were activated by staff amid the violence, triggering a lockdown and notifying first responders to the shooter’s exact location, authorities said.
The emergency alert system, implemented in Winder less than two weeks ago, includes wearable badges that were given to faculty at Apalachee High School, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said in a Thursday interview with NBC News.
Developed by the safety company Centegix, each badge features a small button that can trigger a schoolwide lockdown and alert first responders to a user’s location when pressed many times. For more minor incidents, users can request help from school administrators with fewer presses.
“We got multiple notifications as the shooting was going on from the teachers [on] where to respond,” Smith said of the electronic alerts that went out during the attack, which killed four people and wounded nine. “It also locks down the school. Screens were on lockdown, and the teachers know to go in and lock the doors.”
These instantaneous alerts helped authorities respond quickly and prevent additional deaths, he said.
“They’re telling me within six minutes of the first Centegix hit … he was in custody,” Smith said, crediting school resource officers for confronting the 14-year-old suspect and getting him to surrender.
At a press conference Wednesday, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey likewise said that “the protocols at this school and this system activated today prevented this from being a much larger tragedy.”
Students and teachers, in interviews with reporters following the shooting, said they locked and barricaded classroom doors after seeing alerts across screens in the school. One student also credited her classroom’s self-locking door for keeping the suspect out when he allegedly tried to reenter the room after leaving to get a firearm toward the start of class.
Apalachee social studies teacher Stephen Kreyenbuhl told ABC News that he saw his classroom’s smartboard change to read “hard lockdown” before he even heard any gunshots.
“My co-teacher got the lights. I grabbed a pair of scissors,” he said of his response. “We drill it every semester, this whole part of lockdown. So we train it, you know, pretty, pretty frequently.”
Centegix, whose headquarters is in Atlanta, said its CrisisAlert system is currently used in 43 states and 12,000 locations, including within medical facilities and places of business. More than 80% of public schools in Georgia, along with Nevada, have it equipped.
Georgia has considered requiring all public schools to have a panic system in place, but a bill that would require it, called “Alyssa’s Law,” has failed to pass the state legislature.
Georgia Sen. Jason Anavitarte (R), who sponsored the legislation in his state, said Thursday that he plans to refile the bill as soon as the legislature reconvenes.
Alyssa’s Law — named after 14-year-old Alyssa Alhadeff, who was killed in a 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida — has so far been passed in seven states, including Florida. Centegix said more than 35% of Florida’s public schools utilize its alert system.
Alyssa’s mother, Lori Alhadeff, told NBC 6 in Miami this week that she’s working to get a similar bill passed at the federal level that would require all 50 states to have such an alarm system.
