CORDELE, Ga. (WALB) - The Crisp County Sheriff hosted Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith and his team Tuesday, Oct. 7 as Smith presented lessons that they learned from the Apalachee High School shooting.

First responders from different counties as well as school officials all packed into a conference room at South Georgia Technical College in Cordele. Barrow County’s Sheriff Smith shared scenes from what they saw the day there was a shooting at a high school in their community.

Crisp County Sheriff Billy Hancock said that the presentation was heavy but informational for him and his team.

“One of the things I picked up on his speech before today was when he talked about the smoke from the ceilings and the ceiling tiles falling and having to make a decision to step over a child to go stop a threat or stay with that child. Just... that’s unreal,” Hancock said.

Sheriff Smith and his team walked through the procedures they used, from apprehending the shooter to the reunification process. According to Sheriff Smith, Apalachee was the first school shooting with zero preventable deaths, meaning the training leading up to the tragedy ultimately saved more lives than were lost that day.

Sheriff Smith said that ‘statistic’ is still weird for him to say because those individuals were still lives lost. Smith said he hopes he can memorialize the lives lost by sharing what he learned.

Smith said that he told his staff that they are going to train as many people as they can as a way to honor the memories of the four lives that were lost in the Apalachee shooting.

Sheriff Smith said it is important for school and law enforcement officials to be on one accord before and after a tragedy. Crisp County Sheriff Billy Hancock said he hopes that the different agencies will take these lessons and apply it to their departments.

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