Cru staff gets active shooter training

SOUTH FORT MYERS, Fla. The sound of gunshots echoed through a Bell Tower Shops restaurant Monday, sending people inside scrambling.

It was part of a drill designed to show employees of Cru how to handle an active shooter situation if one were to really happen. Cru owner Bob Boye decided to organize the training session after last year’s Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando that killed 49 — the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

“Nobody thought it would happen at a church until it happened at a church, nobody thought it would happen at a nightclub until it happened at a nightclub, nobody thinks it’ll happen at a restaurant until it happens at a restaurant, so I’d rather be prepared,” Boye said.

Former Green Beret Aaron Forum and fellow instructor Garret Macrine taught about 20 Cru employees Monday how to respond if a shooter were to open fire inside the building.

“The proper response isn’t to immediately call the police,” Forum said. “The proper response is to try to take control of the attacker’s weapon, and then enlist other people around you to take that person down and render them ineffective.”

The exercise turned David Thompson, one of the employees who took part, from a skeptic into a believer.

“At first I thought it was a little corny,” Thompson said. “I didn’t know what I was signing up for and getting into, and then it turned out to be really something you need to learn.”

More than 300 mass shootings have taken place across the country since the Pulse attack June 12.