WEST VALLEY CITY — When word of a possible shooting incident at a West Valley City elementary school got out on Monday, panicked and confused parents soon began showing up with more questions than answers.
Despite the incident ending up being a false alarm, it was a scary situation for parents and their children at Granger Elementary School.
“The principal says we’re going to have a lockdown,” said 5th grader Ahmed Adams. “So we all hide and wait for the police to come.”
“People were crying in my class,” said 3rd grader Hawa Adams.
Students said the noise from the science project sounded like gunfire, then they heard screams.
“A teacher locked the door,” explained Ahmed. “We all huddled up into a corner hoping the school shooter doesn’t get us.”
Hawa said she was scared, but her teacher made her class feel OK.
“After we all hid in the corner, we were all quiet and my teacher got a book and read us a story,” she said. “She did so good. She was trying to protect us.”
The noises that were mistaken for gunshots ended up being from a science project involving volcanoes.
"The first thing you see are police officers and military and all these people, you think something dangerous is about to happen. The first thing you want to do is get to your kids," said Damaris Elizalde, the parent of three children at the school.
What worried Elizalde the most was the location of her daughter's classroom.
"Her room is just in the entrance, so it was really scary and as soon as I saw her I hugged her and I said, 'Are you okay?’" she shared.
Julia Hernandez is the grandmother of a Granger student and was more grateful than ever to be able to pick him up.
"We just want to get him, take him home and make sure he's safe," said Hernandez. "He probably wants his mom and his grandma."
Both Elizalde and Hernandez are pleased with the response and preparedness by the school and the West Valley City Police Department.
"They were very informative about the whole situation, we felt really safe with all the officers being around," said Hernandez.
"I think they were doing an awesome job about communicating with the parents about what was happening, the process, and what we had to do," agreed Elizalde.
With mass shootings becoming a seemingly regular occurrence in the United States, Hernandez was grateful all her grandchildren are safe, while Elizalde is using what happened as an opportunity to teach her children how to respond to this type of situation.
"I think something like this, you can't forget about it just because of everything that is happening in the past couple of months; and just not here, in other states, we'll tell them how they can protect themselves and just try to have more communication," Elizalde explained.
