GRETNA, Va. – Pittsylvania County leaders are putting an emphasis on safety as back-to-school season approaches.
They held one of the first large-scale active shooter trainings in the county at Gretna Middle School on Monday.
Pittsylvania County Sheriff Mike Taylor said he and other community agencies want to always be prepared for a worst-case scenario.
“We want to plan as best we can, and pray that we never have an event such as this here in our community,” Taylor said.
About 250 people from two dozen agencies participated. Pittsylvania County school staff played roles as teachers, students, and parents.
“We have very safe communities here in Pittsylvania County,” Mark Jones, Pittsylvania County Superintendent of Schools said. “We have very structured schools, so we feel very good, but you just never know.”
County leaders said they’ve spent months planning this, they’ve been meeting since January.
“When we got together we wanted to identify what resources we had to respond to an incident such as this, how would we respond, the best response,” Taylor said.
Now that the drill’s over, county leaders plan to sit down to analyze what happened and identify strengths and weaknesses in the response.