Run, hide, fight: UCF police release active shooter training video

Video aims to instruct students, faculty how to respond during a shooting

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – Ahead of the fall semester, the University of Central Florida police department released a new video Thursday with instructions for how to respond to an active shooter on campus.

UCF PD spokeswoman Courtney Gilmartin said the video was created using the Run, Hide, Fight technique created by the city of Houston.

The video begins with a man walking onto UCF’s campus with a black duffle bag. He enters a building and pulls out a weapon.

“In a matter of seconds, UCF could become the backdrop to a nightmare,” UCF Police Sgt. Adam Casebolt says in the video.

In the video Casebolt explains how students can survive an active shooter situation with three words: Run, hide and fight.

The campus community will receive a text alert if there is a possible active shooter situation happening.

“Your first option is to run,” Casebolt says. “Go. Get out, quickly and safely. Run as far away as you can. Call 911 once you’re safe.”

People in the area who can’t get out in time should try to hide. People should barricade doors, turn out the lights and make it difficult for the shooter to see you, Casebolt says.

As a last resort, police say students should try to “fight” and prevent the shooter from further harming other people. Casebolt says this should be a person’s last course of action.

“You only need to fight until we arrive,” Casebolt says. “Help could only be seconds away.”

The four-minute video will be shown at new student and faculty orientations and other campus events, Gilmartin said.

The university, which is one of the largest in the nation, has narrowly avoided an active shooter situation in the past.

On March 18, 2013, a former student who was in the process of being evicted from a UCF dorm, bought guns and ammunition and planned a mass shooting at the school.

James Seevakumaran, 30, pulled the fire alarm outside his Tower I dorm room around 12:20 a.m. in what police said was an attempt to get students to evacuate their rooms.

The former business major then went back to his room retrieve a gun, but then turned it on himself after his roommate called 911.

Police found Seevakumaran’s body along with two guns, four improvised explosive devices and hundreds of rounds of ammo in his dorm room

Watch the full UCF police video in the player at the top of this story.

 


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