Parent ‘appalled’ school district didn’t notify her about shooting

Yulandra Hall, a custodian supervisor at Columbus State University, said the second-shift supervisor asked Friday afternoon how her sixth-grade daughter was doing at Richards Middle School after “someone got shot around there and the school was on lockdown.”

Hall had to learn from a reporter that her daughter’s school on Edgewood Road wasn’t on lockdown and the shooting happened seven-tenths of a mile away on Hilton Avenue.

Muscogee County School District communications director Valerie Fuller said, “We did notify parents of Clubview and Richards,” but Hall said she never received such a message despite normally receiving MCSD alerts.

“I’m a bit appalled,” she said. “I’m hurt, upset, confused. I’m having to find out everything from the news.”

Richards Middle School and adjacent Clubview Elementary School were placed on “secure perimeter” — not on lockdown — Fuller said. That means nobody is allowed outside the buildings, but the schools operate as normal, she said. Both schools dismissed at their regular times, she said, 2:30 p.m. for Clubview and 3:50 p.m. for Richards.

The woman answering the front door Friday afternoon at Richards said principal Lance Henderson wasn’t available for comment.

Clubview principal Teresa Lawson said MCSD security told her between 1:50 p.m. and 2 p.m. to put the school on secure perimeter. No parents tried to take home their children early, she said.

“Everything was fine,” Lawson said. “We collected our kids who were outside and secured our outside doors. We were led by MCSD security, who kept us informed at all times. We were advised that we could conduct our release at normal time. We did that with some extra precaution.”

That extra precaution was telling the several dozen students who walk home from school, Lawson said, to not walk toward the Country Club of Columbus. Fortunately, she said, no student walks home in that direction, but she stood on the corner just to make sure.

All she told the students, Lawson said, was that “something’s going on in that neighborhood, and you’re to go home your normal way today.”

And that satisfied their curiosity, Lawson said, so she didn’t have to tell her elementary school students there was a shooting.

For more on the incident:

Hilton Avenue update: Three loud explosions, officers move toward house

Officer shot on Hilton Avenue, SWAT team on scene

Mayor: Bulletproof vest worked as designed

Columbus Police release photo of suspect in Hilton Avenue incident

This story was originally published October 21, 2016 at 6:16 PM with the headline "Parent ‘appalled’ school district didn’t notify her about shooting."