GREENVILLE — A man with an umbrella caused a storm on Wednesday as East Carolina University went into lockdown mode from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. after reports came about that a man was walking near the campus with a riffle.
The Greenville Police Dept. scoured the area with armed officers while ECU officials did its best to protect everyone involved by sending out alerts and keeping its students and faculty members on lockdown.
After three hours it was determined that the reports were inaccurate, there was no man with a riffle, just a guy with an umbrella. While the early info was false, for three hours the situation was very real.
East Carolina coach Ruffin McNeill, who was watching film during the lockdown, praised the effort of everyone involved.
“You always would rather be safe than sorry. I was glad to see how that our administration and our security people and the Greenville Police and the Sherriff’s Department acted and reacted as quick as they did,” McNeill said.
The Pirates’ second-year coach said that the situation quickly brought to mind other campus shootings, but those fears were put to rest as the day went on.
“It’s just the time that we live in now,” McNeill said. “I thought about the Virginia Tech students, that’s the first thing that came to mind and you get a little sad when you think about that but we learned from it.
“Today was expertly done. We had warnings, we had telephones going off and warning signals and emails. I was impressed with the way they handled it and systematically defused the situation.”
Though locked down in his office watching film, McNeill was able to keep in contact with all his players.
“We have a way to mass text the whole team and let them know what we were doing and where we were and once it was clear we mass texted again.”
East Carolina defensive coordinator Brian Mitchell was also preparing for Saturday Night’s home game against UCF when he received one of those text alerts.
“I was watching film in our defensive staff room when I saw my phone buzz with an email that said the campus is on lockdown,” Mitchell said. “It said there was a gunman on campus and the first thing that came to my mind was “where? Is he close?’”
“They just said he was somewhere on campus and from there you heard all kinds of stories like “he’s hijacked a bus and holding people hostage” or “he’s down in the science building.”
“We have a number of kids that are in the science building and the first thing that came to my mind was “Gosh I hope none of those kids are in harms way.”
With all the reports swirling around, Mitchell said the football quickly became an afterthought.
“We had players text us saying ‘hey I need to be here, I need to be there for lifting’ and I was like ‘tell those boys to stay put and just do what the security and police are telling them to do’. It hit home quick.”
At the end of the day there was no gun or rain, which made for a pretty good day for freshman linebacker Jeremy Grove and everybody else on campus.
“I was about to head to class when I found out the school was on lockdown,” Grove said. “It was crazy I never thought that would happen but it worked out good, nobody got hurt and I got out of class.”