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The terrified Michigan students seen on viral video jumping out a classroom window amid fears the gunman was impersonating a cop were actually fleeing from a police detective, the sheriff clarified.
“A video was disseminated rather … widely that showed the students in a classroom and depicted someone knocking on the door, and pretty much the allegation was that that was the suspect,” Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard said at a news conference Wednesday.
In the clip shot by a student, a male voice can be heard saying tentatively inside Oxford High School during the chaos Tuesday: “Sheriff’s office. It’s safe to come out.”
Several students are immediately skeptical of the supposed authority figure, as one girl is heard whispering, “We don’t know who that is.”
A student standing by the door replies sternly to the voice on the other side of the door, “We’re not taking that risk right now.”
The male voice pleads, “OK, well, just open the door, and look at my eyes, bro” — but his casual language was enough to convince the students he could not be trusted.
“He said, ‘Bro.’ Red flag!” a male student says.
The students then jump out a window and run through the snow to a main entrance of the high school.
On Wednesday, Bouchard told reporters that the person heard talking to the students was “more than likely” a plainclothes detective.
United States
