The day of the shooting at Carolina Forest High School police were in the dark about the meaning of an emergency code.
911 tapes from the incident in which an Horry County High School Student was shot and killed show there was some confusion between school officials and police dispatchers.
The tapes released Thursday show that police had no knowledge of an emergency code used by school staff.
The confusion did not delay police or EMS response that day.
But school administrators say it did point to an important lesson learned from that incident. The need for clear communication.
Cross talk between a school official and police on the day of the shooting at Carolina Forest High School shows police were in the dark about the meaning of an emergency code.
HERE'S A SCHOOL OFFICIAL CALLING 9-1-1:
(from 911 tape) "we're under lockdown, code red and no response."
AND HERE'S AN OFFICER TALKING TO DISPATCH:
(from 911 tape) "ask carolina forest what code red is."
School district leaders say Code Red means there's an intruder or some other emergency that would lead to a school lockdown.
School officials knew what code red meant, police did not.
After a "lessons learned" session following the October incident, school administrators talked about changing their use of code red.
"Whenever you have an incident in your school, you get 911 on the line, just use plain english. Use it as simply and specifically as to what took place, forget about using codes or anything like that," Bobby Nalley, Deputy Superintendent of Horry County Schools, said.
As for metal detectors at schools like Carolina Forest, Nalley says they were always meant to be used at random, not every day at every school entrance.
He says it would simply take too long and require too many teachers.
So another lesson learned from the incident is communicating with students is still the best source for officials to find out about weapons in school.
"If they see a weapon or they see a knife or, sometimes even those that have found that they've brought one to school by accident, they'll come up to you and say, this is what happened," Nalley said.
Nalley says sometimes the least bit of information can be important, from students or parents. If you've seen or heard something, let a school administrator know. They might be able to stop a tragedy.
Prosecutors have cleared the officer involved in the shooting of 16-year-old Trevor Varinecz of any wrongdoing.
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