About 100 University of Pittsburgh students laid down outside the Cathedral of Learning on Friday afternoon to stage a “die-in” to protest the university’s delay in notifying campus about active shooter threats Monday night.
The incident reported at Hillman Library proved to be a hoax.
But students who laid down outside the Cathedral of Learning said the fear caused by the sight of heavily armed police and fleeing bystanders that night was compounded by Pitt’s failure to send any alerts on what was happening for nearly 90 minutes.
Amelia Aceves, 20, a sophomore geology major from Murrysville, spoke at Friday’s event. She said she was on Hillman’s fourth floor Monday night when police with long guns “burst in, yelling, ‘Go! Go! Go!’”
“Students were yelling, ‘There’s a shooter! There’s a shooter!’” she recounted.
Aceves was a fifth-grader in Franklin Regional School District nine years ago when a high school student there stabbed multiple people — so she said it never occurred to her that Monday night might be a hoax.
“I looked and there was terror in both the police officers’ eyes and students’ eyes,” she said. “I thought, ‘This is real. It is finally happening to me.’”
As officers determined there was no threat at Hillman, a second call sent officers to nearby Mervis Hall — further delaying campus police from sending out an emergency notification.
The first one wouldn’t be sent until 12:36 a.m., an hour and 26 minutes after the first threat call at 11:10 p.m.
Pitt and city police and the FBI are investigating. Pitt earlier announced planned changes and issued a statement during Friday’s event outside the Cathedral of Learning.
“While police did rapidly respond to the false alarm of a potential active killer, we acknowledge unacceptable shortcomings in the use of the emergency notification system, and we are committed to doing better,” the Pitt statement said. “The university has begun a major review of the procedures, policies and tools we use to communicate during emergencies, and we are immediately making the necessary changes to ensure accurate information is available to our Pitt community in a timely manner.”
