Thursday, February 14, 2013

St. Valentine's Day Massacre false alarm at Angel Hall

A University of Michigan DPS K-9 unit departs Angell Hall just before 1 pm today

To be clear there was never any real danger. At around 12:30 pm today The Michigan Daily tweeted "Reports of "suspicious behavior:" in Angell Hall. Police were spotted outside the building." The tweet was quickly followed with another "DPS Spokeswoman Diane Brown said no imminent danger." Holy crap, I thought, I'm teaching in Angell Hall right now. Being the responsible instructor that I am, I said nothing to my students and proceeded to check twitter for more details. @NickVanEck tweeted '“@michigandaily: Reports of "suspicious behavior:" in Angell Hall. Police were spotted outside the building.” With assault rifles' in response to the Daily's tweets.

Cautiously, I peeked out of my classroom an into the Fishbowl. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I ventured into the hallway expecting to find police only to find students advertising Birthright Trips to Isreal. I returned to class. At 1 pm as the next class was filing into my classroom, one of the new students overheard me telling my class that we had missed a big commotion. One of the next periods students shared this tidbit with me. Apparently there was a male student walking around in fatigues with a gas mask and a shirt that said "Love is in the air." Though other reports suggest the student was carrying a sign that said. "Love is in the Air. Be prepared." Regardless, the student I spoke to interpreted it to be some sort of poorly executed Valentine's Day artistic statement--something about not wanting to get infected with love. She said that the student came up to her and "said some weird stuff" then walked away. The only thing mildly out of the ordinary I saw was a DPS K-9 unit leaving as I walked out of the building.

Did you see or hear anything at Angell Hall today? If you have reports or pictures, feel free to leave them in the comments or email them to us.

UPDATE: a Reddit user, yoyoyoyo-yoda, posted the following picture of the person to r/uofm today:

Thanks Brad!

Posted by Ben Connor Barrie at 1:38 PM

3 comments:

  1. BradFebruary 14, 2013 at 6:13 PM

    Someone posted this picture to Reddit r/uofm today...
    http://i.imgur.com/VKVGlw5.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousFebruary 14, 2013 at 7:17 PM

    So, I just finished up teaching a class on the ground floor of Tisch around noon. A few students and I were standing in the doorway of the classroom when about 4 cops entered Tisch (with really big guns) and told us to get out of the building. I ushered the students out and we all kind of stood around for a few minutes in shock. Then I walked around to Haven and walked through the door and everything appeared perfectly normal. Then I walked up to the history department and the office had gone into lockdown. A few cops walked around and asked us to call 911 if we spotted anyone wearing camo. After awhile, they came back and gave the all clear.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ben Connor BarrieFebruary 14, 2013 at 7:29 PM

    @Brad, thanks for the link.

    @Anon, thanks for sharing your story.

    ReplyDelete

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