El Dorado students reflect on active shooter threat

EL DORADO, Kan. (KSNW) – What started like a normal day Wednesday at El Dorado High School (EDHS) quickly changed.

“Her face dropped, and she said, ‘Girls, like, go back there. Go back to the showers, like hide, please,'” said Piper Wise, a junior at EDHS.

The school was placed on lockdown. One of nearly a dozen schools across Kansas to receive a call of an active shooter Wednesday morning.

“If anything goes wrong, we’re going to get out of there, and we’re going to run, and you’re going to run like hell,” Wise recalled her teacher telling them.

Students were forced to hide for an hour.

“We were hearing bangs and the door rattles and all of us like hold our breath like oh my god, this is it. We’re gonna die,” said Chloe Gardner, another junior at EDHS.

The girls say texts were going around that a student had been shot. It turned out to be a rumor, and the call was fake.

“What if it actually happened? Like, what if El Dorado just became the next big mass shooting that everyone talks about all over the country,” Wise wondered.

The swatting calls brought dozens of agencies statewide to action.

“We train for these kinds of incidents, and we take any kind of threat seriously,” said Garden City Police Department Public Information Officer Erinn Reyes.

The Russell Police Chief says he heard reports of other schools getting fake calls. Then one came in for his town.

“Our response wasn’t as aggressive as we normally would have, but we still want to investigate and make sure that you know it’s not a credible threat and that our community and our schools are safe,” said Chief Jordan Harrison,

Still processing the threat, Wise has one thing to ask.

“Just please try to keep us safe. Please try harder,” she said, holding back tears.