On April 18, employees of Moody County, the city of Flandreau and the Avera Flandreau Hospital attended a two-hour training on how to recognize and survive workplace violence.
Chad Sheehan, a 23-year law enforcement veteran from Sioux City, retired recently from the Sioux City Police Department to dedicate himself to the S.A.V.E. Yourself training program full time.
In his introduction, Sheehan said, with five young children at home, he has made surviving workplace, school and active killer violence a top priority in both his personal and professional life.
The idea to bring an active killer training presentation to Flandreau first came to light during a June 2016 meeting of the Moody County commissioners.
Commission Assistant Marty Skroch, Director of Equalization DeAnna Berke and Emergency Manager Terry Albers informed commissioners that the previous Friday, an unidentified man walked across the front lawn of the courthouse carrying a gun.
“There was a gentleman on Friday walking across the front lawn of the courthouse holding a rifle like he was coming to the front door,” Skroch said.
Though the man was only walking to his near-by the event got Skroch and Berke thinking about developing a better safety plan for the courthouse and its employees.
The S.A.V.E. Yourself, or Surviving A Violent Encounter, program acts also as an acronym for four main considerations to take in an active killer situation: Shelter in place or barricade, Awareness, Violence Stops Violence and Evacuate.
Sheehan stressed to those at the presentation always to keep in mind the reasons for motivation to make it home safely active a violent encounter: family, friends, children.
During an active killer situation, he said to shelter in place or barricade for a purpose, either as a way to fight back or to buy time for a secondary escape.
Maintaining situational awareness is also important during such a time, knowing your surroundings and listening to what’s going on.
As a last resort, he said violence stops violence. Fighting back by ambushing the active killer, distracting, moving or making noise can buy time for an escape or stop the attack altogether.
Sheehan used two South Dakota shootings as examples of when civilians fought back. In February of 2015 in Lennox, Jeffrey DeZeeuw, a working contractor for a company working for Sioux Steel, shot and killed Jon Richter, 45, following a workplace dispute at Sioux Steel's ProTec facility.
He also shot and injured a friend and coworker of Richter’s. At that point, Brian Roesler came from another part of the building and confronted DeZeeuw. The men fought over the handgun.
After this fight, DeZeeuw left the building.
In September 2015, a Harrisburg High School student shot and wounded Kevin Lein, the school’s principal.
Ryan Rollinger, an assistant football coach and former player at Harrisburg, ran towards the sound of the gun, tackled the teenage shooter and held him down with help from another staff member until police arrived.
The last option Sheehan noted was to evacuate. Knowing multiple evacuation routes and being proactive can save multiple people in an active killer situation.
The biggest part of his presentation, the name of the program and a point he stressed multiple times, save yourself first, then once you’re safe you can focus on helping others, calling 911 or anything else that will get you out of the situation as safely as possible.
