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A man arrested after a lockdown Friday at the University of Ottawa has been charged with carrying a replica firearm, police say.
The man was seen near the uOttawa LRT station at around 4:20 p.m., roughly the same time the university went into lockdown, the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) wrote in a release Saturday.
The man appeared in court Saturday morning. A publication ban prevents CBC from naming him or providing personal details about him.
He was arrested on Waller Street north of the university just before 7 p.m., according to OPS. The lockdown at the University of Ottawa ended soon after.
He is facing charges of possessing a weapon dangerous to the public peace and mischief.
Police said there were no injuries reported, but the investigation remains ongoing.
OC Transpo special constables stand outside uOttawa station Friday. Police say there were no injuries reported in connection with yesterday’s incident. (Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press)Student union concerned
While the lockdown ended after just a few hours and no one was hurt, the uOttawa Students’ Union was still upset about how students were notified.
A statement from the university told people to be ready “to run, hide or, if your life is in imminent danger, defend yourself by any means necessary until you can get away.”
Some people at the university got that message through email, and others via an emergency alert sent through the SecurUO app.
But the student union said not everyone has the app, and the university can’t rely on everyone downloading it.
“[We’re] asking for a stronger action plan and a stronger communication plan for the next time that something like this happens, and I really hope that it doesn’t,” said Elnaz Enayatpour, the union’s operations commissioner, in an interview with Radio-Canada.
“Students didn’t receive an email, they didn’t receive many notifications, they didn’t know what was going on, and so students were really afraid,” she said.
University says it’s reviewing protocols
In a post on Friday, University of Ottawa president and vice-chancellor Marie-Eve Sylvestre wrote that the safety of students, staff and the university community is the university’s top priority.
“Thank you for doing your part to comply with the alert and to keep everyone around you safe,” she wrote.
That statement was followed up by an email Saturday afternoon from Jesse Robichaud, the university’s director of public affairs.
“We acknowledge the anxiety, stress and feelings of powerlessness that were experienced as emergency campus safety protocols were deployed,” she wrote.
Robichaud said Friday’s incident “began in the Rideau Centre area” and that the university’s safety and emergency protocols had been put in place “with the utmost care and caution.”
The university was now reviewing that emergency response, she added.
All students should also download the SecurUO app, Robichaud wrote, as email “cannot be relied on as a primary means of safety alerts when time is of the essence due to delivery limitations. ”