Inside Room 206 on the second floor of Missouri School for the Deaf's Wheeler Hall, Sgt. Shannon Jeffries gave teachers, cooks, residential advisers, administrators and other MSD employees instruction on how to fight an active shooter.
He showed them how to effectively turn scissors into a deadly weapon, detailing where in the body and which arteries to strike. It would be bloody, he warned the group.
Jeffries showed them how to bend an arm and break it when the shooter's arm reaches through the space between the door and door frame. It's hard to pull a trigger with a broken arm, he said.
The classroom looks like another other with cinder block walls, tables, a filing cabinet and a wood decoration on the wall. But with Jeffries' mentality and training, those features mean defense and protection.
Bullets can't pass through cinder block walls. Pressed against the door, tables and the filing cabinet are barricades. Broken into slender pieces, the wooden decoration is a weapon for hitting and stabbing.
"You think of this as a classroom," he said. "When that intruder is coming in, you have to think of this as a battle zone. Think - you have to do this to survive. You have to do this to save those kids."
Jeffries - along with other Callaway County Sheriff deputies Clay Chism, Matthew Palmer and Rick Hughes - provided active shooter training to all MSD employees Friday. They've done the same at the North Callaway R-I School District and Kingdom Christian Academy.
Missouri Senate Bill 75 became law in August 2013, requiring all public and private schools to conduct at least eight hours of active shooter training annually.
According to news reports, there have been more than 70 school shootings since Adam Lanza killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012.
While it's standard practice for schools to hold some sort of intruder drill, the active shooter training takes defense to another, more realistic, level.
Not only do faculty and staff learn strategies from the sheriff's office, but they put those skills to work through three simulations. First, employees experienced a "Columbine" situation. With Columbine, students, faculty and staff only hid. So, that's what deputies told the MSD employees to do.
Jeffries acted as the intruder, carrying an unloaded airsoft gun. He easily opened doors and shot at whoever was in his line of sight.
After the Columbine simulation was completed, Jeffries briefed with the MSD employees, who said it made them feel "helpless" and "defenseless."
In the next two simulations, employees utilized parachute cord and barricades. They tied knots around the door handle and used tables or their own bodies to anchor the door shut. Access inside classrooms wasn't as easy for Jeffries.
"Do you feel more empowered? Don't feel as vulnerable? Not like a victim?" Jeffries asked after the second simulation was completed.
The crowd responded with a resounding "yes" and head shakes.
For Vicki Warfield, a cook at MSD, the parachute cord gave her a sense of bravery, and training supplied her the knowledge of how to protect herself and others.
"I think with this training now, it's going to save more lives than (training) in the past," she said.
In addition to his police experience, Jeffries is certified through Strategos International, a law enforcement training company whose instructors "possess many different types of expertise along with a wide array of tactical, live-fire, corporate/church security and organizational development topics."
Friday morning started with historic view on school shootings, which Jeffries said date back to the 1700s. Research has been conducted, Jeffries said, to identify a pattern or profile of an active shooter. Despite an ample research pool, experts have not yielded any conclusive results, Jeffries said. Counterfeiters, rapists and murderers all fit into a profile, but not active shooters.
What is clear, Jeffries said, is that active shooters are typically male (there have been seven female shooters) and they always feel that they are a victim.
"Now, they're doing the bullying..." he said.
Friday's training focused on lock down procedures from common areas like the auditorium and gymnasium, classrooms and the library.
As Jeffries stepped into MSD's library, he said he couldn't help but think of Patti Nielson - the teacher who called 911 during the Columbine shooting in 1999. She hid with students under desks and tables in the library, where Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris and killed most of their 13 victims and eventually themselves. Nielson survived.
Jeffries said threat recognition, which Nielson is an example of, is key to establishing the lockdown. In these situations, time and training play major roles.
He said 50 percent of active shooters have been taken down by unarmed people, 25 percent by armed people and the remainder by police. In a perfect world, police response times would be 10 seconds, 30 seconds, Jeffries said, but that's "unrealistic."
"You are truly the first responders, the pillars of the community," he told MSD employees.
Margilee LaBorde, MSD assistant superintendent, said the school plans on improving its communication through digital alerts. Email notification will be one form of communication, she said, as iPads and Smart Boards are in every classroom. With texting being a popular communication tool for the deaf, LaBorde said texting is likely to be the best way for information to be shared.
"It's on you all the time," she said.
MSD has always practiced intruder drills with training reflecting statistical information, LaBorde said. Last year was the school's first time participating in a more intensive active shooter training, a shift from what the school practiced before.
With each training session, LaBorde said MSD is taking a "proactive approach" to safety.
"We love our children," LaBorde said. "We love our families. We want them to know their children are here for an education in a safe environment. We want children to understand school is a safe place."