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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

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Active shooter classes draw crowd

Community Service Officer Gary Shults with the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office teaches a class in surviving active shooter situations on Saturday, Aug. 27, at the Volunteer Search and Rescue Building in Hayden. The class taught citizens how to increase their chances of surviving a shooting in a business or a school. (Colin Mulvany / The Spokesman-Review)
Community Service Officer Gary Shults with the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office teaches a class in surviving active shooter situations on Saturday, Aug. 27, at the Volunteer Search and Rescue Building in Hayden. The class taught citizens how to increase their chances of surviving a shooting in a business or a school. (Colin Mulvany / The Spokesman-Review)

What should you do if you find yourself in an “active shooter” situation? Run – even if you have to jump out a second-story window to do it.

“They are going to hunt people,” said Community Service Officer Gary Shults of the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office. “If you stay there in the location they will shoot you. You need to get out of there however you can.”

There were 179 active shooter cases nationwide between 2000 and 2014 – incidents in which one or more shooters targeted people in an enclosed area. A little more than half of the shooters have a personal connection to the location, Shults said.

In response, the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office has begun offering classes on how to survive an active shooter situation. The classes were offered first to businesses and schools, and were so popular the Sheriff’s Office decided to offer them to the public.

Shults taught the first active shooter class offered to the community Saturday. The class filled up almost immediately after it was announced, as did the second and third classes planned for September and October. Shults said he now plans to offer the class every month/Nina Culver, SR. More here (subscription).

Question: Is this a class that would interest you?



D.F. Oliveria
D.F. (Dave) Oliveria joined The Spokesman-Review in 1984. He currently is a columnist and compiles the Huckleberries Online blog and writes about North Idaho in his Huckleberries column.

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