Hunter Wilson/Daily News Morgantown Police Officer Travis McIntosh poses as an armed intruder Friday during a training exercise at Casco Products Incorporated in Morgantown. The company had trained employees on proper procedures in case a real incident occurred.

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officer fired blanks, made threats

By BURTON SPEAKMAN, The Daily News, bspeakman@bgdailynews.com

MORGANTOWN — As he entered the building and began screaming and shooting, employees ran out of the building to a safe location.

No one was harmed, and law enforcement know exactly who the culprit was: Morgantown Police Officer Travis McIntosh, doing his part in a drill for employees at Casco Products Incorporated.

As McIntosh walked through the building shooting 6 mm blanks into the air and yelling that he was going to kill someone, the 13 employees - and a truck driver who just happened to be there - ran from the building; equipment was still running as the employees fled down the street.

This is the second time that Phelps has been involved in such a drill at Casco, he said: The company has decided that it’s important to be prepared in the event someone enters the business with a weapon.

Morgantown Police Chief Billy Phelps said Casco is the only company in Morgantown that has done such planning.

“I’m impressed that the business was this forward-thinking,” he said.

The employees knew that a drill involving a shooter would be conducted within a couple of days, he said, though they weren’t apprised of the specific time or date.

“These kinds of things can happen anywhere,” said Dan Dostert, manager of environmental safety and quality at Casco. “The key is to be prepared and make sure everyone goes home to their families at the end of the night.”

Casco has facilities all over the country, yet this is the only one that’s undertaken such a drill, Dostert said.

Over the next few weeks, the plant’s entire staff will discuss what happened during the drill in order to improve their emergency plan. For instance, Dostert said, when the “shooter” first entered, many employees hid behind doors - they needed to get out of the building. Also, he said, someone should pull the fire alarm on the way out, in order to alert emergency responders as quickly as possible.

But don’t look for such drills to become commonplace. Police say such an endeavor takes a lot of planning, and even then, it still carries a bit of risk.

Walking in with a weapon could cause a lot of liability, said Barren County Sheriff Chris Eaton, a member of the Kentucky Sheriffs Association’s board of directors.

“I definitely wouldn’t want to see a drill like this done without consulting law enforcement,” he said, adding that employees have to know such a drill is in the works. “With Kentucky’s concealed weapon law, someone could have a weapon in the business and no one would know it.”

Indeed, one of Phelps’ initial concerns was the possibility of being shot by an employee, but Casco management convinced him that the drill was safe.

Afterward, Phelps talked to the employees and asked them if they could describe the shooter; none could provide any sort of description. That makes for terrible witnesses, Phelps sai, but it means the employees did the right thing.

They got out - alive.