Parents, children, and spectators at a cheerleading competition in Dallas fled from a chaotic scene over the weekend as fears of a gunman set off a panic, with at least 10 parents and children injured and taken to the hospital. Their conditions weren’t life-threatening and included a range of injuries, from bumps, to bruises, to fractured extremities, but there was no shooter. Police in Dallas said a fight that broke out between two people on Saturday, March 1, at around 1 p.m. set off a false alarm. Word that there was no shooting quickly spread at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, which was evacuated while people were told to head to a family reunification center.
Attendees told local news outlets they ran because, in the moment, they believed their lives were in danger.
“That was the scariest moment of my life that I thought, like, this was it,” Ashely Ryan, a Tulsa resident whose daughter competed in the event, told KWTV-DT.
“It’s the latest active shooter false alarm in a nation constantly- on edge about the potential for the next mass shooting,” said Kelly Sampson, senior policy counsel at the gun violence prevention group. “If you’re in a big crowd area, if you see one person panicking, you’re going to panic too,” she said. “It’s not like it’s unreasonable to think that someone would have a gun, because that’s sort of the country and the culture that we’ve created.”
Police responded to reports of an active shooter that came in staring at 1 p.m., the Dallas Police Department said. After investigating, they found no shots had been fired, but that crowd of about 58,000 people had been startled by the sound of poles being knocked down in the fight. The fight was between parents, according to Brian Bianco, a spokesperson for Varsity Bands, which runs the National Cheerleading Association All-Star Championship. Video posted to social media showed dozens of children, some in cheerleading uniform, and adults running from the conversation center; some fled to nearby businesses and buildings. Ryan, the Tulsa mom, told KWTV-DT that she saw people fleeing in a panic. Some were even hiding in cars or begging strangers to let them in their car.
