Officials have shared that four minutes after a gunman arrived at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School and began opening fire, police entered the school and began searching for the shooter.
St. Louis Public Schools Communications Director George Sells shared with CNN that security personnel were also at the school when Orlando Harris, the alleged gunman, brought more than 600 rounds of ammunition and an AR-15 style rifle into his alma mater.
“We had the seven personnel working in the building who did a wonderful job getting the alarm sounded quickly,” Sells said.
St. Louis police Commissioner Michael Sack shared that the school doors being locked most likely delayed Harris in his rampage.
“The school was closed, and the doors were locked,” Sack told KMOV. “The security staff did an outstanding job identifying the suspect’s efforts to enter, and immediately notified other staff and ensured that we were contacted.”
Sack shared that officers wasted no time getting into the school to stop the gunman, especially after delays in Uvalde, Texas, and Parkland, Florida, raised concerns over delayed responses.
The commissioner noted that police received the call of the active shooter at around 9:11 a.m. CST and four minutes later after his officers were deployed and inside the school. Sack also noted that upon their arrival at the scene, officers rushed in to engage the shooter without as much as a conversation.
“There was no sidewalk conference. There was no discussion,” Sack said. “There was no, ‘Hey, where are you going to?’ They just went right in.”
A gunfight between officers and the gunman broke out at 9:23 a.m., just 12 minutes after the department received the call. Two minutes later, officers reported that the suspect was down.
Explaining the eight minutes it took to find the gunman, Sack shared that the officers had to maneuver through the big school once inside and avoid crowds of students and staff fleeing the building.
Sack said the suspect was eventually found “not just by hearing the gunfire, but by talking to kids and teachers as they’re leaving.”
Officers down the street attending the funeral of a fellow officer also responded to the call, according to Sack. He also shared that a SWAT team going through training exercises was able to quickly deploy to the school and perform a secondary sweep of the building after it had been evacuated.
Other officers were reportedly “off duty; some were in T-shirts, but they had their (ballistic) vests on,” the commissioner said, adding that “they did an outstanding job.”
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