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Officials: Parent Interference Dangerous in Emergency Situations

68 views · Published 25 March 2015 · 1:47 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: NBC 15 · 2015 · News & Politics

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BALDWIN COUNTY, Ala. (WPMI) Authorities say an armed parent tried to intervene when Barbara Grice appeared on Elberta Elementary School's campus in a failed attempt to kill her sister. Sheriff Huey "Hoss" Mack said a possible school shooting is a volatile situation and when you add parents coming in and trying to take things into their own hands, the situation could have become explosive.

"One parent tried to come up--that was armed--at the perimeter and was stopped. And of course, that's a very dangerous situation. We wanna make sure that the public knows that in this type situation, the only people that need to be armed at that incident is the law enforcement.," said Baldwin County Sheriff Mack.

Law enforcement and school officials say they made the call not to put out an alert to parents immediately for fear more vigilantes would show up. 

"There was a unified voice of police chiefs who said 'thank you' for not putting that call out when you did, because had you, we would have had a rush of people on the campus that could have jeopardized our officers' lives," said Terry Wilhite, spokesperson for Baldwin County Public Schools.

Law enforcement said Grice was arrested quickly without problems. Besides the armed parent, the only other bump was a little confusion caused by multiple agencies responding to the emergency call. 

"Everybody needs to understand exactly what's going on and not have to guess or pull out a card or look at it, or hope that my codes and signals are the same as the sheriff department's," said Elberta Police Chief Stanley Devane.

If ever faced with a similar situation, law enforcement say the lesson learned is to coordinate better with what role each department will play and when to contact parents.

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