No evidence of mass shooting plan in gun incident that caused Midlands school lockdown
The Newberry County Sheriff gave more details on the gun-involved incident that locked down Newberry High School on Tuesday afternoon.
Sheriff Lee Foster said the magazine of a gun fell out of a student’s book bag. The teacher recognized the magazine and made moves to protect the students, according to Foster. The teacher tried to retrieve the book bag but the student grabbed it. A pistol then fell out of the book bag and the teacher moved to further protect the students. The student then grabbed the weapon and book bag and fled the room.
“He did a phenomenal thing,” Foster said about the teacher. “He did a brave thing. And he did that to protect the children.”
The incident happened at Newberry High School just before 11 a.m, according to the Newberry County Sheriff’s Office. No one was injured and no shots were fired.
The sheriff’s office later identified the student as Anthony Quavadre Blakely. After fleeing the school and going to a Burger King parking lot across the street, Blakely got in his car and headed toward Columbia. Surveillance footage showed Blakely running away. He was taken into custody near the Chapin exit on Interstate 26, the sheriff’s office said in an release just after 1 p.m. Tuesday. He now faces charges of weapon possession on school grounds and disorderly conduct.
It was unclear if the student planned on using the gun, Foster said, and a preliminary review of the student indicated that the student displayed no evidence to be planning a mass shooting.
“He had no activity with law enforcement,” Foster said. “On the preliminary face there didn’t appear to have any activity or bad activity in the school.”
School administrators utilized the active shooter alert during the incident, prompting the school to go on lockdown and law enforcement to respond. Foster and the Newberry School District superintendent both praised the cellphone-based “panic button.” After the alert system was activated, every door was locked and the entire campus was shut down within two and three minutes, the superintendent said.
“When you plan for this and you know how to react it makes it a lot easier,” said Superintendent Jim Suber. “I don’t know that we would have done a whole lot differently. Everything seemed to work well.”
A school resource officer was inside the building and responded to the incident, Foster said. Within a minute a Newberry Police Department officer was on the scene. The police officer was the sister of the SRO.
“If I had any two police officers responding to something it’d be those two,” Foster said.
Foster commended the teachers and staff for how they reacted to the incident as well as the students. Foster also praised the cafeteria staff for being able to plan and feed the students and responding officers while the campus was locked down.
“I was very impressed to see the logistics that took place when the cafeteria workers began to get the food ready,” Foster said.
The sheriff’s office said other Newberry County schools went on “alert mode” because of the incident, but did not specify what alert mode entails.
This story was originally published November 13, 2018 at 11:51 AM.