A new report from NOVA gives the clearest picture yet of what happened on Dec. 8 when a student shot at a teacher on the Woodbridge campus.
The shooting occurred when a disgruntled student, Jason Hamilton, snuck a high-powered rifle hidden in a duffel bag into his math class.

Hamilton fired two shots from a distance of no more than six feet at the professor. His shots missed. As he attempted to reload his rifle, it malfunctioned.

A campus police officer quickly called in a report of shots fired to the Prince William County Police Department. Campus and county police arrived less than a minute later. Shortly after that, police entered the Seefeldt Building, encountered the suspected shooter and arrested him.

After the first report of shots fired it took 15 minutes for the first alert to reach students. That was only via a computer pop-up alert. Notifications via text messages, display screens in the hallways and automated phone alerts took up to 40 minutes.

William Flagler, the director of Emergency Planning at NOVA, insisted in a telephone interview that is not a fair measure of alert time and that it should be measured from when he was able to establish an emergency operations center. From the time Flagler was first notified, it took nine minutes for the first alert to be sent out.

Flagler said the bulk of the time it took to send out the message was spent verifying the information.

“We don’t want to send out a message in one minute to make sure you guys are safe, so the next time something happens you guys don’t say, ‘Oh, this is another false alarm,’” said Flagler.

The report, called the Woodbridge Shooting After Incident Review, stated that NOVA’s police chief had been notified that a shooter had been apprehended before the first message was sent. It was seven minutes later when an alert was sent out.

The message that was sent at the time still aired on the side of caution. It simply read, “Shelter In Place Until Further Notice. There is an emergency on campus.”

According to the report, it took five minutes from the time notification was requested until the actual alert was sent out. The report noted that there was no pre-approved language for such an incident and that having it could improve notification times.

Flagler took issue with the language in the report he authored. He said that the wording for an alert already existed; it just was not in the system. Still, the report criticized some messages for being “vague and not timely.”

Use of other communication took longer than the computerized alerts. It was 20 minutes after the shooting that the first text message was sent out telling recipients to stay in place and that there was an emergency on campus.

It took 40 minutes for phone messages to be sent to the classroom telephones. This happened after it was determined that the Woodbridge campus had not done so earlier. Those tasked with sending the message were either sheltered in place or apprehending and arresting the shooter.

Searching and clearing the campus for additional shooters or potential bombs was complicated by the fact that police lacked floor plans and keys for many rooms. Each office, classroom and closet had to be searched. It took three hours to clear each room and then escort students, faculty and staff to a designated area.

Further complicating the matter was that police had limited access to the police station. This made retrieval of the needed keys, blueprints and floor plans more difficult.

This was despite an earlier report prepared for Virginia’s community colleges after the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings urging that such material be prepared for just such an event.

Many of the systems put in place for an emergency were not utilized. The designated emergency operations room was never used, which the report said reduced access to computers, phones and news channels.

The report also said there was limited access to the security-camera system. Flagler said this was because only certain people had access to the video for security reasons. Since much of the team was in Annandale, the report noted this hampered the overall knowledge of the situation.

While the after-incident report did have many critiques for what went wrong, there were some nuggets of what went right. It was noted that police were able to respond to the situation quickly because of training they had received, in part due to beefed up training recommended in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings.

Even though the initial people who were tasked with sending alerts were unable to do so, the report credits implementation of an alert system that can be activated remotely with helping in the outcome.

Some recommendations contained in the after-incident report have already been implemented. For instance, there is now existing language in the system for emergencies. Additionally, NOVA has a system to track reports of potentially disturbed students, although Hamilton was not in the system.

By: Joshua Davis

Stay updated by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter.