CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Kanawha County school security officials are taking security more seriously than ever after an incident at Phillip Barbour High School in Phillipi on Tuesday in which an armed 14-year-old student took a classroom hostage.
State Police and the boy’s pastor were able to diffuse the situation and there were no injuries which Executive Director for Security at Kanawha County Schools Keith Vititoe said was extremely fortunate.
“We feel that in that situation there’s some very lucky people,” Vititoe said. “If somebody comes into the school with a gun you have no idea what their intent is. He very easily could have shot several people or the whole class.”
Vititoe said that one aspect of school security that has been changed in Kanawha County is numbering the doors of the school in a orderly way.
“There’s a consistent numbering system. You basically start out with the main entrance as door number one and label the doors chronologically around the building in ascending order,” he explained.
The numbering system serves to assist law enforcement in identifying the location of any potential security threat as quickly as they can.
“We have a very good working relationship with the Kanawha County Sheriff’s Office. And the county commission gives monies for extra police duties in our schools,” said School Safety Director Charlie Warner. “So we have a large police contingency on a daily basis that visits our schools.”
Despite feeling prepared for an emergency and being on the same page with the county police force, Warner said he would be lying if Tuesday’s incident in Barbour County didn’t raise some concerns among teachers and administrators in Kanawha County.
“We’d be remiss if we didn’t say the incident didn’t make some of our administrators a little nervous,” Warner said. “This is the first incident of this magnitude in West Virginia.”
Both Vititoe and Warner noted that one positive that comes out of the scary incident is that it can serve as a wake-up call for school officials to take school security seriously.