Faculty fakes gunman attack on crying 6th graders

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Published: Monday May 14, 2007

A teacher and assistant principal at a Tennessee elementary school staged a fake gun attack on frightened students during a class trip, sparking outrage among parents, according to a report from CNN's Newsroom.

According to school board member Lon Nuell, the prank was poorly timed. "Ghost stories are standard, and you scare the kids out of their wits," said Nuell. "But this was very unfortunate timing, if the timing would ever be good for this sort of thing, this was not it," referring to the Virginia Tech shootings that killed 33 students and professors in April.

According to one student who participated in the trip, Dalton Brown, the assistant principal instructed the students to get under desks and said that they had a "code red" – reserved for when an individual is in possession of a gun, knife, or bomb. The school later issued a press release classifying the events as a "typical campfire prank." According to Brown's mother, the prank crossed the line.

"It's just appalling that they would classify this as such a thing, because there's nothing typical about what they did to our children," said Brown. "The kids were underneath tables crying and praying to God and begging for their lives, thinking that they were gonna die and that they were never going to see their families again ."

Let's just keep everyone under the umbrella of fear, including kids.