CLEARWATER, Fla. — The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office led an active assailant training drill at High Point Elementary School in Clearwater on Wednesday. The drill included local police departments and first responders, as well as the Pinellas County School District. 

What You Need To Know

  • Dozens of first responders took part in a mass casualty drill

  • The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office spearheaded an Active Assailant Mass Casualty Exercise at High Point Elementary School

  • Multiple law enforcement agencies, fire departments, EMS, Emergency Management teams and the Pinellas County School Board took part

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said they made the drill as real as possible. In the scenario, a woman forcefully entered the school to confront her husband about an affair with another teacher.

After shooting him, she went to other areas of the school, shooting several more people. Within a matter of minutes in the scenario, law enforcement located her hiding in a building, where she pointed her gun at them, and they took her out.

The sheriff said the goal is to make the exercise as realistic as possible and better prepare the county to respond. The areas being used for the exercise will be clearly marked and closed off to the public.

He said it’s important to know how everyone will react under such stressful circumstances, which is why they made the scenario so realistic.

“That’s why we’re testing ourselves and trying to find the holes, trying to find the vulnerabilities, and that for me is probably the overarching reason for doing something like this and the most important thing. We want to get it right. We want to be 110%,” Gualtieri said.

Pinellas School Superintendent Kevin Hendrick said the district wasn’t told about all of the details, so they could truly test teachers' and staff’s reactions, as well as their current policies. At one point, the “shooter” tried to get a teacher to unlock her classroom door for her, which she refused to do.

“The natural response might be to go out and help somebody, but you have to follow your training and that’s part of what we wanted to see today. And so we had all the folks in those buildings were teachers, were school board employees who could respond not knowing what the situation was going to be,” said Hendrick. 

The school district also put its reunification plan into play to test it out. Gualtieri said they’ll have a full report together within a month or so with what worked, what didn’t, and highlighting areas for improvement.  

Road closures were in effect at 150th Avenue North between 58th Street and 62nd Street into the afternoon to cooperate with the driil.