SAN ANTONIO – The University of the Incarnate Word is coming under fire from students and parents about how communication was handled after two reports of an armed person on campus.
Students instead took to social media to keep each other updated, at times with incorrect information.
KSAT 12 looked into what some are calling a lapse in communication during Tuesday night's and Wednesday morning's situations.
UIW junior Brittany Deike got the school's emergency RAVE alert about a suspected gunman on campus around 7 p.m. Tuesday.
"It had been stated that things happened much earlier than 7 p.m., around 6 p.m. even, and I was still here at 6 p.m. So that was the scary thing. I got out of class at 5:45 p.m. and left at 6:15 p.m. I had no way of knowing," Deike said.
It wasn't just the late alert that created frustration. Many were furious that the school didn't go on lockdown.
"I thought it was kind of ridiculous," Deike said.
The second report of a gunman happened around 11 p.m Tuesday. Trinity University notified its students about UIW being on lockdown soon after that. However, UIW did not send the alert about being on lockdown until 12:27 a.m Wednesday.
Deike was one of many students showing frustration on social media, posting this tweet: "When they tell you campus is safe yet they have 2 Medevac heli's circling campus every 5-10 minutes."
UIW's RAVE alert system does not automatically send to every student and staff member; instead, they have to sign up. The problem is, some students who said they had signed up still didn't get the alerts. UIW administrators said they heard about this issue as well and are looking into the RAVE system.
"I was getting a lot of information just from students, videos and photos," Deike said.
A lot of that information on social media proved to be wrong. A picture circulated Tuesday of a man dressed in black at the top of a structure armed with what looked like a gun. Many on social media posted that it was the suspect, but it was later confirmed that it was just a security guard.
Deike said students wouldn't have had to rely on each other if the school had communicated better.
In a press conference Wednesday afternoon, UIW Police Chief Robert Chavez answered many questions about the delayed communication.
He acknowledged that things could have been handled differently in terms of communication. He said that he could have had alerts sent out earlier. When asked if he considered the delay in alerts a mistake, he said no. He said he and his officers were first trying to verify information about the gunman.
"I can understand the frustration and if I was one of those parents I would look at it that way. We at the time were trying to locate this person with the vast space in this university, we were trying to find the person. We had information that he had just left a certain area and he was headed to another area. You want to know it's an active, a real shooter, a real threat, (not) just an ROTC guy walking around dressed in black, because those things, you know, happen," Chavez said.
Chavez said he does not believe the two reports were a hoax and will continue investigating. A gunman was never seen or caught.