Video captures panic inside North Fort Myers High School after shooting threat

It was a scene of chaos and confusion as an active shooter alert went out to an entire school on Wednesday.

WINK News is now getting a look at what it was like inside North Fort Myers High School when kids learned that they might be in danger.

“Everybody was crying, and they’re on the phone with their families, and their families are crying because nobody knows what’s happening,” said Alexa Murphy, a North Fort Myers High School student.

Crowded chaos; that’s what 14-year-old Alexa saw first-hand during the school lockdown.

Alexa and her friends were having lunch when the lockdown began. That’s when she said dozens and dozens of students crammed into the kitchen.

“Nobody knew what to do. Everybody’s panicking. I could just tell this isn’t gonna go well. And I wanted to get this on video to, you know, show people,” said Alexa.

At first, it looks like any high school cafeteria. Students surround each other, conversations fading in and out. Then, as quickly as a bell can ring in school, chaos ensues.

“There were pans like clattering in the background. So people interpreted that as gunshots. And they just started somebody started screaming and running. Everybody started screaming and running. So that is an entire cafeteria in the back of a lunchroom kitchen screaming and running to the other side for their lives,” Alexa said.

Students start screaming, shoving, and sprinting in every direction. In the video, you can hear Alexa scream from behind the camera. The scene looked real, felt real, and was a real response to a fake threat.

“That was, like, one of the scariest times of my life,” said Alexa.

Alexa’s mom, Sandra Murphy, hopes the school learns from this fake threat.

“I think your school learned a hard lesson because they need to be prepared for stuff like that. Somebody could have got super injured being trampled, you know, some girl did supposedly hurt herself,” said Sandra Murphy.

Sandra had to sit and wait for answers while her daughter was in the middle of the chaos.

She has seen her daughter’s video, and she wants answers.

“What if it was real? They didn’t know what the heck to do. They were all running around, looking for open doors,” said Sandra.

Watching the video truly broke her heart.

“It was bad. It was really bad. And I didn’t like the fact that they didn’t know what to do,” Sandra said. “I was in school in the 80s. And thinking something, this was just unheard of. No one would ever imagine something like this would happen. So when it did start to happen, you know, are trying to figure out what’s going on in this country that what why is this occurring.”

Hearing about the threat was hard for Sandra. “I was originally crying because I was just imagining them in this situation,” she said, but when she learned the truth, “It was fake. But it’s still I went through all the emotions like as if it had been real.”