The Catholic Charities office in Omaha, Nebraska hired a security consultant to stage a mock mass shooting drill at its office last Wednesday, with the consultant roaming the building and firing blanks from a rifle, but didn’t tell employees the event was a drill, the Omaha World-Herald reports. Afterward, the consultant asked employees if they wanted to buy a gun from him.
The man who ran the drill, 27-year-old John Channels, is in custody–but for a variety of charges in an unrelated case about Channels allegedly assaulting a teenager who was taking martial arts lessons from him. Channels faces sexual assault and child pornography charges in that case, and prosecutors last week brought five counts of making terroristic threats and one weapons count for the misguided drill.
On May 19th, Channels entered the Catholic Charities office in Omaha wearing a hoodie and a dark mask, carrying an assault-style rifle. He then wandered through the building firing blanks at people, who ran frightened from the building. Some ran past “victims” Channels had staged–actors covered in blood, some of them pretending they were wounded and asking for help. At one point, Channels stood in front of a glass-enclosed conference room and simulated gunfire into the office.
Dozens of Catholic Charities employees ran for their lives. One woman jumped off a retaining wall into a dumpster in an effort to protect herself. An elderly employee assumed she could not outrun the gun and came to terms with her seemingly impending death.
After his dramatics, Channels asked some of the victims if they wished they had a gun on them at that time and told them he could sell them a weapon and teach them how to use it.
Catholic Charities Omaha Executive Director Denise Bartels gave the green light to the exercise after being told about it by the group’s HR director and head of security. Channels said two directors for the group also approved of the exercise, saying they wanted it to be “lifelike” and realistic. Through his lawyer, Channels said he assumed local law enforcement had been told the drill was occurring–he claims to have dropped notices off at local police stations and with the Nebraska State Police–but apparently no one had, and when staff members called the police frantically thinking they was a mass shooter on site, police arrived in full force. It was only after Channels surrendered that the exercise was announced.
It is unclear if others, including leaders of the organization, will face criminal charges, and so far, no employees of the organization have filed any civil lawsuits against their employer for the trauma experienced by the drill.