Rachel Bacchus<\/a>
Volunteer crisis actors were transported from the Ann and David Hicks Hall to the Student Union.<\/p>\nThe school allowed students and staff to volunteer as crisis actors for the activity, and Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office Academy Instructor Anthony Dziedzicki thanked the volunteers before explaining what to expect.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can only do so much with cardboard and mannequins, but we put live people in here; it changes the dynamic, so thank you,\u201d said Dziedzicki.<\/p>\n
The volunteers were kept inside the Student Union food court and had time to mentally prepare before the exercise.<\/p>\n
Ann Scheuren, a student and employee at UNF, described her feelings towards the simulation.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, I do believe that this is something that\u2019s needed, but I\u2019m excited, and I\u2019m nervous at the same time,\u201d said Scheuren. \u201cThe laws that we have, the actions that we\u2019ve seen, or therefore lack of action, which is action itself, it unfortunately is an occurrence that may continue to happen, which is why we have to do an event like this\u2026to train the university.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scheuren played the role of a daughter who needed to be reunited with her mother, played by her coworker Valerie Odom, the Associate Vice President for Administration and Finance at UNF.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am hopefully prayerful. I have a son that just graduated from Florida A&M University. There have been times when I\u2019ve been concerned about his safety,\u201d said Odom. \u201cI\u2019ve worked in education administration for 32 years; it\u2019s sad that we have to go through these drills with the way that the climate is today, but I want UNF to be prepared in case the unfortunate happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Korbin Blastow, a senior majoring in Communications with military experience, had deeper insight into similar training exercises. \u201cI\u2019ve been in the National Guard for three years and we\u2019ve done a lot of training, especially simulation-type ones for mass casualties or events that go crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blastow highlighted the importance of training exercises, such as the simulation at UNF.\u00a0\u201cThe more reps that you get in the crazier scenarios, the more that you get prepared for that situation and hopefully better prepared for the situations that are a little less chaotic,\u201d said Blastow.<\/p>\n
After the active assailant portion of the exercise was completed, Gabby Valerio, one of the volunteers who pretended to have an injury, described her experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt first\u2026I saw people running, and then I heard someone yell get down, and I just dropped\u2026I went over to near the bar area\u2026 and hid with some other people, and I faked a dislocation of the knee from hitting the pavement too hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey came after a little while and found us. Once they found out I had a knee injury, they helped me over to the side of the room where everybody was and had me sit down in one of the chairs. Once they were able to clear the area\u2026they indicated who had injuries and what kinds of injuries and helped all of us get out there so we could get medical attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
The simulation allowed volunteers to scan a QR code to sign a form listing their name, location, and whether they were safe. Volunteers who needed to be reunited with loved ones were given a separate QR code.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a situation like this, you never know what\u2019s gonna go on, especially when you\u2019re not the first person to see it, so seeing the chaos displayed by some of the other students and faculty kinda played into our part of mass confusion, mass chaos, not knowing what\u2019s going on,\u201d said Blastow.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeeing Florida Highway Patrol, JSO, and campus police all work together to find us and make sure that we\u2019re safe and accounted for while taking care of the threat so that way we can safely get out of here was very good cause obviously there\u2019s all these threats going on with all the other shootings that happen and making sure that the police for us know what they\u2019re doing is very comforting and it\u2019s good to see first hand,\u201d said Blastow.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
For more information or news tips, or if you see an error in this story or have any compliments or concerns, contact [email\u00a0protected]<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Students and staff at the University of North Florida participated in the school\u2019s active-assailant training exercise during intersession.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269547,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-269546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Hicks](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Ann-and-David-Hicks-Hall-1-600x400.jpg\")