A chilling and timely drill at school Sunday, April 29, 2007 • BY MIKE FRASSINELLI • Star-Ledger Staff A wounded student lay in a school hallway dotted with blood, gun cartridges and pipe bombs, wailing: "I've been shot! Somebody help me!" An injured teacher nearby moaned, "I have children who need me! Please!" A camouflage-wearing madman disappeared into the school gym, interrupting the loud beep-beep-beep of the security siren with the louder kaboom-kaboom of his 12-gauge shotgun blasts. Cartridges bounced from the weapon as smoke filled the school, affecting each of the five senses of teachers. Teachers in the Greenwich Township School District in Warren County are used to giving exams, but the test they got Friday during a police rapid deployment drill inside the grades 6-8 Stewartsville School might have been the most important one they took. Designed to get teachers to think on their feet, the drill was planned long before the April 16 massacre that left 33 Virginia Tech students and professors dead. Teachers played the roles of students and themselves, not knowing in advance which scenarios they would face. Students were off on Friday due to a teacher's in-service day. Police played the roles of the school shooters and themselves, shooting the "killers" with paintball guns. The drill hit close to home. One of the injured Virginia Tech students is Colin Goddard, nephew of Greenwich School Superintendent Kevin Brennan. "We are not having the drill because of the situation that occurred at Virginia Tech, but you can't help but make a connection," Brennan said. Brennan was impressed by how the teachers reacted. During the first drill, the shooters went through the front door. During a follow-up drill, they entered through the back. An alert teacher spotted a shooter outside a window during the second drill and immediately called for a lockdown. "We've been practicing all kinds of drills relative to our daily activities in school," Brennan said. "However, we wanted to kick it up a notch. We wanted to really get in here and let the staff work through some scenarios with the police department to test themselves. ... How does it sound to hear a gun firing in a school? When you hear individual students crying out that they've been injured, how do you respond to that?" Elsewhere in New Jersey in the past month or so, high schools have had similar drills. A day before the Virginia Tech killings, officers from Warren and Long Hill townships had a training drill at Watchung Hills Regional High School. Another drill, at Burlington Township High School on March 22, was tinged by controversy. Conservative Christian leaders objected to the scenario: The "gunmen" were part of a right-wing fundamentalist group wanting to avenge the punishment given to a student who prayed before class. Greenwich teachers on Friday learned that there is rarely one correct answer about how to handle a school shooting. Do they lock the classroom door and potentially leave their students sitting targets in one room? Do they lower students out windows, potentially leaving them in the path of another shooter outside? Do they save a wounded student in the hallway, but potentially risk more carnage by leaving pupils unattended in the classroom? "I want targets as the shooter, so I'll do anything I can to get people in that hallway," said James J. McDonald, police chief in Washington Township, Warren County, who helped Greenwich police conduct the drill. "One (way) is, pull the fire alarm. ... Another thing I might do is, I might grab that kid that was running down to the office and I might say, 'Knock on that door,' and hope that that teacher will open that door so now I have 25 targets instead of just the one." McDonald noticed during the first drill that one teacher in the cafeteria hid under a table. "You might as well be holding a piece of paper in front of you," the chief said. Event organizer Rich Guzzo, chief of Greenwich police, said the drill was designed to test the officers and the teachers. Officers were stationed at locations away from the school property and radioed in for help. "We could get something out of it by going through an empty building," Guzzo said. "But we get more out of it by having chaos." If the drill was designed to get teachers to think, middle school nurse Lynne Wilson considered it a success. "People," she said, "will be talking about this for a long time." Mike Frassinelli may be reached at mfrassinelli@starledger.com or (908) 475-1218. © 2007 The Star-Ledger. Used with permission.