KENOSHA, Wis. — A terrifying situation for the Kenosha community Tuesday morning after someone called in a fake shots fired incident at Bradford High School.
"I was on Washington and there was police cars coming and I was thinking 'okay there's gonna be a crash,' and as I got closer, all the cars were going into Bradford," student Genesis Crawford said.
It was a full-fledged law enforcement response, but within minutes of officers getting to the school, they found out it was possible swatting.
"Right now, it sounds like a swatting call," dispatchers said on the radio.
Watch: Parents and students react to swatting call at Bradford High School
A scary scenario for those responding, those inside, and those waiting to hear more.
"Initially we got a text message that the school was in lockdown, then we got an email. The email was a little more detailed, mentioning that it was a call that went out and they believed it was swatting," Denise Cherry-Russell said.
Cherry-Russell has a student at Bradford. She said when she heard they were on lockdown, she immediately thought of her other child who experienced a gun scare at their school in November.
"My youngest goes to Roosevelt, so I went through this earlier this year with one of those calls. It's not a warm fuzzy feeling. I know it's hard to find a solution, but we've got to come up with something," Cherry-Russell explained.
Kenosha Police confirmed this was a swatting incident and there was no threat. It's an incident students said they just prepared for Tuesday.
"It's kind of ironic to me because we had an ALICE drill this morning, so all this stuff happens after that," Crawford said.
ALICE stands for alert, lock down, inform, counter, escape. It's the training students and staff within KUSD get to prepare for emergency situations.
"We always ask our parents to talk to their children at home as well. We need that message to be repeated, not just by school, but by their families and out in the community, that they have to be careful about how they say things, what they say, and anything that appears to be a threat will be taken seriously by the district," Chief Communications Officer Tanya Ruder said.
In a few weeks, Kenosha residents will be voting on multi-million dollar referendum for the school district. It includes additional safety measures for some schools.
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