Parents in Hialeah met with school officials Monday to share their concerns about safety in academic buildings after authorities said they received a prank call last week claiming that there was a shooter at Hialeah High School.
According to a spokesperson with the Hialeah Police Department, authorities received a call about a possible shooting at the high school on Friday at approximately 12:30 p.m. Interim Chief Ivan Silva with the Miami-Dade Schools Police Department said they were on scene within minutes. Video showed several armed officers and K-9 units at the school, which was immediately locked down.
"I genuinely was scared for my friends' lives," student Gabriel Suriano told NBC6. "We don't feel safe here."
Suriano said that he had gone to school in the morning, but developed flu-like symptoms, and was out sick the rest of the day.
The Hurricane season is on. Our meteorologists are ready. Sign up for the NBC 6 Weather newsletter to get the latest forecast in your inbox.
"I was freaking out because if something were to happen, I would've not known," his mother, Claudia, said. "Why does it need to occur to that, or what needs to happen for them to take action? You need to put more police officers, more security, you know. Figure out something."
Claudia Suriano said she was not notified about the incident until several hours after authorities first received the 911 call. Although her son was not in the school at the time, he showed NBC6 messages that claimed to have heard gunfire in the building.
"There was a lot of panic that was happening and everything," Silva said. "At the end of the day, we found nobody was hurt, and there was no evidence of an actual shooting anywhere."
Local
A spokesperson with the Hialeah Police Department said that the investigation revealed the alert was a "swatting" prank call, and the school was deemed safe.
"This type of behavior, as far as hoax calls, participating in these types of things -- whether it's done by email, social media, phone calls -- are very, very serious crimes," Silva said. "They don't realize that, if they get caught, they will be arrested and there will be serious charges against them."
But Friday's incident has brought the concerns of some parents and students to the forefront; concerns that they raised before school leaders on Monday.
"We're trying to figure out what measurements they're going to take. What are they going to do? They're not telling us anything," Claudia Suriano said. "This is where you're supposed to feel safe because you're getting an education. This is where you come. This is where I live. My kids, I feel that the teachers are their second mother."
In addition to increasing the police presence in schools, parents said they would like to see metal detectors or wands implemented.
"There might be some schools that had some larger threats or issues," Miami-Dade County Public Schools board member Roberto Alonso said. "I will say that it is not a state requirement, and it's something that parents also have to look at because we do have large sums of students coming in at the same time in the mornings."
Gabriel Suriano cautioned individuals who would make similar threats as what his peers experienced on Friday.
"Talk these things out with someone," he said. "Don't do these irrational things, you know, that could cause harm to people."
Meanwhile, Silva extended his thanks to law enforcement partners who assisted in the response last week.
"Once everything was put under control, we looked at everything and searched everything, and there was no sign of anybody being hurt or of a gunshot fired anywhere in the school," he said. "We have a lot of security measures in place. We tell the parents that this is a joint effort. We have many layers that we have here, starting from having our assigned SRO (school resource officer) at the school."
A spokesperson with the Hialeah Police Department said that, alongside the Miami-Dade Schools Police Department, the investigation into Friday's incident remains active and ongoing, particularly to determine the identity of the caller. The spokesperson also noted that this was the first such call in Hialeah, but that there have been several similar incidents throughout Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
"They are safe," Alonso said. "We always have our trained individuals at our schools, and the most important thing is for students to communicate. If they see something, they need to say something."
