An alarm system in the University of Georgia Health Center was somehow triggered Tuesday morning, warning those inside about an active shooter.
“Active shooter! Run. Hide,” a student told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution she heard.
Campus and local police evacuated the building but found no evidence of any type of shooting, university officials said.
“This was a false alarm,” UGA said in an email to the AJC. “There is no active shooter, and officials are currently investigating the cause of the false alarm.”
The “false alarm” was a relief to a university that experienced a horrible tragedy a little more than three months ago, when nursing student Laken Riley was killed on campus. Riley, 22, was killed near Lake Herrick, which is only a couple of hundred yards from the health center.
But it was still a terrifying ordeal Tuesday for Elizabeth Yancey, a student from Rome. Yancey had an appointment at the health center on Carlton Street and was startled by the alarm shortly after 10 a.m. She hid in a closet with two employees for about 45 minutes until police gave the “all clear” and told everyone there was no danger.
“Nobody knew what was going on,” Yancey said. “I just started texting everybody I knew. I called my physical therapist, Andy Smith, at the Ramsey Center, and they hadn’t heard anything, either.”
A campus-wide email about the incident was sent to the university community shortly after noon. The campus was not alerted when the alarm was sounding.
After the incident, the health center announced it would be closed for the remainder of the day.
— Staff writer Fletcher Page contributed to this article.
