SWAT teams swoop after reports of suspicious person at Taravella High. It was a false alarm.

The initial report sounded eerily familiar to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. A former student causes alarm by walking onto a Broward high school campus without warning carrying a large bag.

So administrators at J.P. Taravella High in Coral Springs immediately locked down the school and alerted police right before the school day was supposed to start at 7:40 a.m. Students, teachers and parents waited in fear for two hours before they learned it was a false alarm, a case of a former student being mistaken for a current one.

With news helicopters hovering above, SWAT teams stormed onto campus and checked each classroom looking for clues. Some students who were still in the halls when the lockdown started reported being locked out of class and hiding in stairwells.

“Everyone in the school has been sitting in their classrooms with the lights off for the last hour and 12 mins. Police came in my classroom not too long ago armed with rifles. They’re looking for a former student,” one freshman tweeted, adding video that shows a dark room with audio of a law enforcement officer questioning the teacher and students.

While some students and parents complained on social media about having to go through the trauma, others said the school district and police handled the situation in the best way possible. Nakina Sankar Gravier said she learned about a potential threat when she was dropping off her son for Little Trojans Academy, a pre-K program at the school.

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