Video circulating on social media showed terrified students jumping through a window to escape a mass shooting Tuesday at Oxford High School, though authorities said Wednesday that in the chaos, the students were fleeing from a deputy and not the suspected shooter.
Update 3:35 p.m. EST Dec. 1: “A video was disseminated rather ... widely that showed the students in a classroom and depicted someone knocking on the door, and pretty much the allegation was that that was the suspect,” Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard said at a news conference. “We’ve now been able to determine that was not the suspect.”
In the video, which was posted on several social media platforms, a man can be heard urging students to “just open the door and look at my eyes, bro.”
“More than likely it was one of our plainclothes detectives, and he may have been talking -- ‘bro’ -- in a conversational manner to try to bring (the students) down from the crisis to say, ‘Come on bro, let’s get out of the classroom, let’s get you outside’ -- that kind of comment,” Bouchard said. “The suspect, we have now confirmed by analyzing all of the video from the time it began to the time we took him into custody, never knocked on the door.”
Original report: A video reportedly recorded by a student in a Michigan school during a school shooting incident Tuesday shows terrified students jumping out a window after the alleged gunman knocks on a classroom door pretending to be a law enforcement officer.
In the video posted on several social media platforms, a voice can be heard from a hallway outside of a room where students were hiding amid an active shooting situation at the Oxford High School in Oxford, Michigan.
“Sheriff’s office. It’s safe to come out,” a male voice can be heard saying.
A female voice is heard whispering, “We don’t know who that is.”
A student standing by the door says to the person in the hall, “We’re not taking that risk right now.”
The male voice from the hall answers, “OK, well, just open the door, and look at my eyes, bro.”
“He said, ‘Bro.’ Red flag!” a male student warns.
Then the video shows the students running toward a window, climbing out and heading into another part of the school.
“Slow down. You’re fine,” a police officer stationed at the school’s entrance tells the teenagers, as the 52-second clip shared to Snapchat, Tik Tok and Twitter ends.
The shooting on Tuesday left three students dead and at least eight others wounded. The alleged gunman is a 15-year-old sophomore at the school. He was arrested about five minutes after 911 calls were made from the school at 12:51 p.m.
See the video below: