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A suburban Philadelphia school went on lockdown just before 9 a.m. Monday after what police call a "suspicious incident."
The lockdown at Upper Dublin High School was very brief and police tell NBC10 it was initiated after school security saw four students in the hall with what looked like a long gun.
Investigators say the suspected gun turned out to be a long umbrella.
"All the kids were scared. All the kids in there were crying and they just want their parents," said Heather Saraceni, parent.
The four male students are being questioned by police.
Parents were emotional as they showed up after hearing about the lockdown. Some heard the news after receiving a text message from their kids inside the school.
"I just took off from work, and I said I'm coming there and I'm coming to get you right now," said Saraceni.
"I got a text message from my son saying that the high school was on lockdown, so I decided I better get over here and figure out what's going on," said Tony Davis, a parent.
Upper Dublin High School is located at 801 Loch Alsh Avenue in Fort Washington, Penn.
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we are all crazy.
Oh here we go... the new media needs anything to keep this going. Did anyone out there see the movie "Wag the Dog?"
Next the headline will be slanted. I suppose it could be worse...they could have thought the kid had a long umbrella and it turned out to be a gun. If they could have printed that they would have.
It is possible to kill someone with an umbrella. The entertainment industry has already romanticized it's use as a weapon in the TV series The Avengers, where John Steed used it very effectively on numerous occasions.
Perhaps after the gun control lobby has succeeded in removing every last gun from the country, the umbrella will become the lunatics weapon of choice. We should start now crafting laws and regulations on the specifications of umbrellas and where and when they may be carried in public.
This is ridiculous. An umbrella?
People are a little jumpy after what happened on Friday. Between the shooting and the arrest of an Indiana man who made a school shooting threat over the weekend, it's better to be safe than sorry. But I think school security should have been a little more thorough before making the call that what the student was holding was indeed a gun, not an umbrella.
Get it together people. Be vigilant but don't go off the deep end. Strength and composure are needed not weakness and hysteria.
Jumpy I get, but this is overboard reaction.
I am not sure the reporting is accurate to start with. Appears dramatized a bit.
I would have loved to be a fly on the wall during the interrogation!
> Are you the legal owner of the umbrella?
> Is the umbrella loaded?
> Do you have a permit to carry an umbrella?
> Did you threaten anyone with the umbrella?
> Do you have a history of umbrella related offenses?
"The four male students are being questioned by police."
I wonder if it is illegal to possess an umbrella if you have a history of detention after school?
@dan42day,
Good one. And don't forget
>Is it an assault umbrella?
>Have you attended an umbrella safety class?
>How many more umbrellas do you have in your arsenal?
>Why do you feel you need to carry an umbrella if it's not raining? What are you afraid of?
> Have you ever used an umbrella in conjunction with an illegal, or controlled substance?
> Have you operated an umbrella while intoxicated?
> Are you a member of the N.U.A. ?
>Did you buy your umbrella from a licensed dealer, or was it a private sale?
>How many umbrellas do you keep in your home? In you car?
>Do you belong to any organizations that promote the ownership and use of umbrellas?
yeah sooo if i got this story correctly.... security saw someone with a gun inside the school. then the school forces everyone to stay inside the school along with the purported person with the gun.
anyone see something wrong with that?
You have got to freeking be kidding me...
Better safe than sorry.
Whats next egg cartons?
A little paranoia is healthy but this not so much. Although this might be somewhat understandable if the handle of the umbrella looked like a riffle. Even though security should have investigated before calling for a lock down.
Here come the hysterical reactions. The people who want attention and want to be part of an exciting event will be coming out of the woodwork.
Who needs Islamist terrorists to paralyze our institutions, transportation systems, and public gathering places. Americans are paranoid over other Americans. Bin Laden wins.
And the four kids are being questioned by police. Why? Is it now illegal to carry an umbrella?
Don't y'all watch spy movies? That umbrella could be a semi-automatic. We've got to start having more umbrella inspections.
I never was a security guard but i can relate. I am fairly sure they receive a similar training as what i went though and like me are just working aka doing a their job.
We used to have "shoot , don't shoot videos for training purposes for the boarding teams" and other training.
Being a lifesaving service , we trained using the ideal of minimum force (think lawsuits) procedures after the end of each training the instructors would always say , it is better to be judged by 12 than carried by six.
I do not remember a umbrella in any of the flicks but their was a tire iron in one. One thing that gets people killed or hurt is tunnel vision.
I am glad , i never had to kill anyone in my 20 plus years.
Apparently, being a rational adult is not a requirement for being a school official.
Barney only has one Bullet, and he Has to keep it in his shirt pocket. He would be more dangerous with an umbrella.
retiredcoastguard: so now we have school security running amuck and gunning down every kid in sight who makes a false move? That oughta solve the problem.
4 corners .. Well this is not Bush's fault , is it ? GOD is not allowed in school anymore so it is not his fault either,is it ?You wanted change did,nt you?
Have some rainbow stew and before you boo someone at your next convention remember what happened after this last one.
Dam crickets, their awfully loud !
A priest and a pastor from the local churches are standing by the
side of the road, pounding a sign into the ground that reads:
"The End Is Near! Turn Yourself Around Now--Before It's Too Late!"
As a car sped past them, the driver yelled, "Leave us alone, you
religious nuts!"
From the curve they heard screeching tires and a big splash.
The pastor turns to the priest and asks, "Do you think the sign
should just say "Bridge Out?"
We live in an increasingly paranoid society. In the 1950's McCarthyism and the "red scare" had people literally looking under their beds for communists.
Situational awareness is good, paranoid behavior is not.
But we do not live is a more dangerous society. This 24 hour news cycle is distorting peoples' view of the world. Just look at what we where told on Friday that all turned out to be WRONG:
people who think it is funny or wrote to make fun are people who do not have kids in schools. wait until they have kids or ralatives in school. what a cold blood you are.
What's really unfortunate is that America has come to the point that an UMBRELLA is misidentified as a weapon. I don't blame the school security for treating the measure seriously because if they hadn't and it truly was a weapon, they would rather reap the repercussions of being wrong than for a serious crime to occur. We truly can't put anything past anyone seeing that we have entered a state of panic & anxiousness. I do think it is a bit overboard but at the same time, who knows how many times people have saw something thinking it was nothing and someone wound up dead.
But what if these events are in some way being caused by the paranoid society that we are creating?
Perhaps the more insane society appears as a whole, the more difficult it is for a disturbed person to find his balance.
Perhaps it's easier to kill if you've been taught that everyone is out to kill you.
Not at all. The rest of us don't want to buy into your fears. If your fear is so intense that it makes you see an umbrella as a rifle then you're having paranoid hallucinations.
it is better having paranoid hallucinaitons than having kids die hallucinating an umbrealla with a rifle. and just a split of second hallucinating an umbrealla with a rifle, some one could die. do not think you are tough. by the way it is an awareness, not paranoid behavior.
No, it's mostly paranoira. Schools in this country are one of the safest places for kids to be.
It's not the fact that the threat could have been there or not, it's the fact that for some reason the media [this site in example] felt the need to make it national news. This is not national news, but rather an obvious over sensationalized story printed in order to gain revenue.
,
So, has anyone approached the woman who reported a 'man with a rifle' at the train station about providing false information to a police officer? Maybe people also need to educate themselves about firearms and what they actually look like and what they can be used for as far as defense goes. The knee-jerk reaction of being frightened of every firearm is proof that more people need to learn more about the world, and that not every person with a stick or an umbrella is dangerous.
Thank you, backtobasics, I agree completely. I knew this would happen.
You thought children were overprotected before? They're going to be followed, monitored, spied on, and sheltered like you would NOT believe. THIS is the generation that will really go wild once they're eighteen and free.
I would have had those teachers and that principle FORCED to get MANDATORY vision screenings. And if they did not pass, they would most defineately NOT be allowed to return to school until they got glasses or contacts. I'd also have psychological testing for whoever is THAT paranoid, to the point that they call the damn cops over a @!$%#ing umbrella. This kind of thing just pisses me off.
Now I'm not totally sure, but wouldn't this be considered filing a false police report? Punish THAT, not the umbrella holder. Paranoid nutjobs.
Maybe we ought to take the Archie Bunker approach to airline hijackings and require every kid in school to carry a firearm. That would scare off any would-be terrorist shooter.
December 11, 2012: 7th Circuit Court of Appeals requires Illinois to pass a law allowing conceal carry. Removing Illinois from being the only state in the nation to not have conceal carry.
December 14, 2012: 20 children and 8 adults killed in Newton Connecticut.
The nation is going to hell, step by step, led by the NRA and Republican party.
No, I think the Demonrats are taking the lead on this one.
When Right Wingers try to impose themselves upon others on issues such as access to contraception, content of science classes and school prayer, they are bad. When Right Wingers work to get the government off our backs and fully legalize self defense, they are good.
When Left Wingers seek to redistribute our wealth by force they are bad. When the Left fights to keep the government out of our bedrooms it is good.
Dirp, the extremist on both sides are to blame. Unfortunately the extremist on both sides think they are correct and can no longer rationalize or compromise. Every day we have to listen to crackpot extremist from the left and right and you wonder why people are popping corks.
As far as our kids, well lets just say the back and forth they get between the two sides is nearly dizzying and parents better get on the stick to help keep their kids upright and going in a constructive direction. Spewing rhetoric at them is about as destructive as it gets, these kids aren't stupid either.
Long story short, don't be a sheeple!!
An umbrella can be used to disguise a rifle very easily. Hide it inside the closed umbrella. With all the nuts out there I'd rather they be safe than sorry. If they hesitated long enough to confirm it was just an umbrella would be time enough for them to start shooting before precautions have been taken. Take the precautions first ask questions later.
Sometimes, Kelly, an umbrella is just an umbrella.
It's perfectly legal to open carry in PA without a permit. The only places it is restricted is Philly, cities of first class(not sure what that is), and the normal federal buildings, schools, motor vehicles, and court facilities. People are getting way too sensitive these days.
This is what happens when you promote arming everyone. Everything and anything that could be a gun creates a hysteria which leads to situations like this. It is an over reaction and in fact a reaction in the wrong direction. We do not want a society where we fear that everyone has gun and might use it, we want a society where we expect no one to have a weapon on them.
I am reasonably sure most outlaws agree with you. Can i have some of that rainbow stew you are chowing on ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STLAuUzzdiU
I agree but that is not the reality we live with.
There are people who are ignorant of any kind of weapon and panic at the site of horned frog (could be armed). Many people and law enforcement will not be happy until law abiding citizens are disarmed or killed. Then the thugs in charge can kill on site at the site of a ball point pen. Our freedom is almost a past reality.
Don't fool yourself, umbrellas are dangerous. My grandma always warned me about the curses that could ensue from opening one indoors. :D
If teachers and staff were armed they could have prevented this!
fuzzy -
Haven't heard that one in years, but yes, there are curses attached to opening one indoors.
So now when the kids are bored they yell "Gun!" instead of pulling the fire alarm...
Government schools are a sick joke...and should be closed...
Maybe if they would allow kids to put on boxing gloves and express their feelings of anger and frustration instead of having them arrested every time they sneeze, they wouldn't be reaching for guns or forming gangs to beat classmates to death and stuffing them in barrels to burn the bodies.
There is no room for anything in between.... just absolute Zero Tolerance to extreme unthinkable violence, so why not go all the way.
Teachers are not allowed to exercise any judgement calls on discipline any more. They have to follow rule books written by lawyers and are condemned regardless of what role they take.
Dee Ten: It's a self-correcting situation. After the security guards mow them down a couple of times the kids will stop yelling "gun!"