Courtesy of Madame Noire
Less than a week after the Sandy Hook shootings, Greer Phillips, a principal in East Harlem’s P.S. 79, the Horan School, decided to conduct an unscheduled, unannounced drill.
At 10 am on December 18, the Tuesday after the shooting, a woman’s voice came over the loudspeaker and announced that there was a “shooter” or “intruder” in the building and instructed the teachers to “get out, get out, lockdown.”
The school serves 300 students with special needs like autism, severe emotional disabilities, cerebral palsy and other disorders.
One teacher told the New York Times, “We really thought we were not going home that night. It was probably the worst feeling I ever had in my life.”
Another teacher, Santos Sabio, explained that after five minutes, she realized it was a drill, saying “It was a surprise, but it shouldn’t be a surprise.”
When police officers arrived on the scene, school officials told them it was just a drill.
