Bel Air police, fire and EMS practice active shooter response at Bel Air Middle School Sunday

Four words were repeated over emergency radios Sunday morning as police in tactical gear went through the hallways of Bel Air Middle School, guns at the ready, firefighters and EMS workers turned part of the school parking lot into a triage area and panicked parents tried to save their children.&quot;This is a drill.&quot;More than 100 people participated in an active shooter exercise, held by the Bel Air Police Department and the Bel Air Volunteer Fire Company, so police, fire and EMS workers could practice a joint response to a mass shooting.The event was an inaugural exercise for Bel Air police and fire agencies. Harford County Public Schools officials, town leaders, fire company auxiliary members, fire police and police Explorer members also participated.Bel Air Fire Chief Rick Davis kicked off the exercise by calling the Harford County 911 center.&quot;This is a drill,&quot; he told the dispatcher. &quot;The name of my location is Bel Air Middle School.&quot;Davis said he had seen shooting inside the school, and he was not sure how many shooters were in the building.&quot;There's just blood everywhere,&quot; he said.Davis stayed on the phone as a report of an &quot;active assailant&quot; could be heard over police and fire radios. The school's fire alarm was ringing steadily.Several Bel Air officers, wearing tactical helmets and protective vests, approached the front door, their guns drawn. A man came out, saying &quot;help, help!&quot;The officers questioned him about the situation and then entered the building and moved through the halls. They could be seen through windows decorated with paintings of the Minions characters.Several more adults and children, who were pretending to be faculty and students, came out of the building.Calls such as &quot;subject contained&quot; and &quot;subject barricaded&quot; were heard over the radio.Several adults, who were playing frightened parents, ran into the school a short time later.&quot;My babies are in there!&quot; one woman shouted.Officers could then be heard shouting at her and the others to get back.Members of Harford County's municipal police SWAT unit, which has officers from Bel Air, Aberdeen and Havre de Grace, arrived, heavily armed and wearing olive drab-colored uniforms and helmets. They entered the building, too.Bel Air Police Chief Charles Moore later walked through the school hallway, where adult and child actors lay on the floor or leaned against the wall, pretending to be dead and injured shooting victims.Yellow cards marked where on their bodies the wounded had been hit.Moore asked them about their impressions of how officers performed, making notes on a legal pad.Police continued to clear the school as members of the Bel Air, Abingdon, Darlington and Joppa-Magnolia fire companies arrived. Ambulances and fire trucks filled a section of the parking lot, as volunteers in bright red vests laid down tarps to collect the wounded.A fire truck and ambulance were maneuvered in front of the triage area as a shield, as the active shooter situation was still happening.Micah Chesley, 11, of Edgewood, played a dead student. He lay on the grass as his mother, Roksana, pretended to grieve.He recalled lying in the school hallway, pretending to be dead.&quot;The fire alarm was ringing, and it got really annoying,&quot; Micah said.Micah, who is going into sixth grade at Edgewood Middle School, said he and his classmates practice for multiple emergencies, such as fires, bomb threats, building lockdowns and natural disasters such as tornadoes and hurricanes.His older brother, Malachi, played a &quot;runner&quot; who was in the school when officers arrived. He said they were asking him and other students questions about the shooting.&quot;It was scary,&quot; he said. &quot;I could feel my adrenaline pumping.&quot;Malachi, 12, is going into eighth grade at Edgewood Middle, and he said he and his classmates also have multiple emergency drills.&quot;Hopefully not,&quot; he said when asked if he thought a shooting could happen in real life.Their mother, 33-year-old Roksana Chesley, relaxed on the grass and joked with her sons, but she also held her younger son's hand and looked over the information card hanging from his wrist by a black band – the black indicated he was dead.Chesley said she was among the parents who rushed into the school. She lay down after being stopped by armed officers, but she also kept moving to reach her children and other youths.&quot;I belly crawled down the long hallway to where I felt like I could try to find some kids,&quot; she said.She carried Micah out, and she guided other students by the hand. Chesley said she expects she would do the same thing in a real-life situation.&quot;It wouldn't be an issue for me to run in and help,&quot; she said.Moore, the police chief, said the exercise went well overall, and mistakes will be reviewed during a debriefing session.&quot;I think [practice is] very important because of the things that are going on around in the world, and actually locally – something like this could happen here,&quot; he said.Moore stressed that the exercise is also designed so the community knows that if an active shooter strikes in Harford County, police and fire agencies are, at least, &quot;practicing and preparing.&quot;Rich Gardiner, spokesperson for the Harford County Volunteer Fire and EMS Association, noted active shooter situations have become common all over the U.S. – six police officers were shot, three fatally, in Baton Rouge, La., Sunday morning in an ambush.&quot;They're here and they're here to stay,&quot; Gardiner said. &quot;We've got to get ahead of the game.&quot;

Bel Air police, fire and EMS practice active shooter response at Bel Air Middle School Sunday

Don't miss our 4th of July sale!
Save big on local news.

SALE ENDS SOON

$1 FOR 12 WEEKS

Don't miss our 4th of July sale!Save big on local news.

SALE ENDS SOON

$1 FOR 12 WEEKS

Don't miss our 4th of July sale!
Save big on local news.