Police officers rush into Mayport Middle school on Thursday, June 5, as part of an active shooter drill. | Dan Scanlan, Jacksonville Today
Published on June 5, 2025 at 1:54 pm
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Five staccato gunshots rang out Thursday morning inside Mayport Coastal Sciences
Middle School, followed by an automated alarm broadcasting “Lockdown!” across the campus as red strobe lights flashed.
But it was only a drill.
Within minutes, Duval County School Police officers began arriving as part of a multi-agency training exercise that included Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and Fire and Rescue Department personnel on the Mayport Road campus to deal with a fictional shooter inside, and his “victims.”
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Coming less than three months after the 20-year-old son of a sheriff’s deputy opened fire at Florida State University’s campus, killing two people and wounding many others, first responders dealt with a fictional lone gunman inside a public school.
“While we all pray that we never have an active shooter in Jacksonville, it is important that we test our tactical and technological readiness should such a tragic event occur,” Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said. “Nothing is more precious than our kids. This simulation is a testament to our first responders’ commitment to safeguard our children and our community schools.”
For the first time, the drill Thursday was done at an Atlantic Beach school, with all three local beach city police departments joining Jacksonville and school district police as well as paramedics in a simulation of a “real-world event” that has happened all over the country, said School Police Chief Jackson Short.
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“One of the lessons that we as a country have learned in the past is not getting that first aid in there fast enough,” Short said. “So concepts such as a rescue task force gets fire rescue personnel into the crisis site sooner, and that is one of the concepts we will practice today. … It is opportunities like this that make all of our first responders better prepared to respond to a crisis, should it happen here.”
Dozens of school shootings have occurred across the country in recent years, the most recent at FSU.
In January, a 17-year-old Solomon Henderson killed himself and another student at Antioch High School in Nashville. A month earlier, student Natalie Rupnow killed a classmate, a substitute-teacher coordinator and herself at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisc.
Twenty five years ago, two students killed 12 others and a teacher before dying at their own hands at Columbine High School in Colorado. In February 2018, former student Nikolas Cruz shot and 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. And in May 2022, Salvador Ramos killed 19 children and two teachers inside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, officers surrounding his former school for an hour before finally going in to find him dead among his victims.
With these tragic shootings in mind, the Sheriff’s Office has held an active shooter drill for the past four years at a local school to work on how officers contain and neutralize a gunman, how paramedics deal with the injured, and how surviving students are evacuated.
This time, Mayport Middle School was the scene at 9 a.m. Thursday, staff from the Sheriff’s Office and school police stationed around the building to monitor what would go down over the next hour, clipboards and radios in hand.
First came the gunshots, followed by the lockdown warning, the recorded voice warning staff inside of an “emergency lockdown – ensure all students are inside classrooms and lock the doors.” Then within a few minutes, school police rolled up and ran inside.
Soon, Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department ambulances arrived, staging on the north side of the school to deal with teens role-playing as “injured” students. Paramedics in protective gear ran through the front door as more officers arrived to check security gates around campus, or join the search inside for the simulated gunman.
“In an active shooter situation, every second counts,” Fire department Rescue Chief Jake Blanton said. “… Law enforcement understands the need for rapid evacuation and trauma care; they understand the importance of quickly securing the scene and neutralizing the threat, which allows us to make prompt entry so we can begin immediate treatment of the wounded.”
Within 45 minutes, an estimated 30 police and rescue personnel were inside the school as multiple emergency vehicles staged inside and outside the campus, some in nearby streets. By 10 a.m., about an hour into the drill, word came that the “gunman” was in custody as school buses rolled in to move students to Fletcher High School to be reunited with their families.
“We have high school role players who will be simulating students who need to be reunified with their families,” Short said. “… We will have role players responding to that location, looking for their loved ones.”
Along with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and Fire and Rescue Department, plus Jacksonville Beach, Neptune Beach and Atlantic Beach police departments, the city’s Division of Emergency Management also joined the training exercise.
