Umbrella sends ECU into lockdown

Social media sites harbored rumors of a hostage situation at East Carolina University on Wednesday after a man’s black umbrella was mistaken for a gun.

The university issued a campus-wide lockdown as a result of two independent calls made to police about a man walking down 5th Street with what was believed to be a rifle.

Campus police later confirmed the report was a false alarm and that the alleged gunman was actually a man with a black umbrella.

But before police were able to confirm these details, several students were evacuated from Rivers Building, which was rumored on social media sites to be the site of a hostage situation.

Meredith Eason, a sophomore at ECU, was in class in Rivers Building when the school was put on lockdown at about 10 a.m.

She said her classmates had varied reactions to the lockdown and the updates they received via Facebook and Twitter.

“I don’t think everyone was taking it seriously, until we heard police right outside our door in the hallway,” she said.

Eason and her fellow classmates were led from the second floor of the building to the parking lot where they waited for about five minutes for a bus to come pick them up.

“In that moment when we were out in the open, when we were waiting, it was kind of confusing because if we were really in that much danger, it didn’t make sense that we would be waiting for a bus outside,” she said.

“It was just weird because there were cameramen across the street and it was kind of like a spectacle.”

Eason and her fellow classmates were taken by bus to Todd Dining Hall. Shortly after they arrived, another bus brought a bus of young children from the Child Development Lab, a facility that serves as both a day care and a research institution on campus.

Brent Herron, the UNC system associate vice president of campus safety and emergency operations, said officials from ECU, the Greenville Police Department, Pitt County Sheriff’s Office and the N.C. Highway Patrol all responded to the situation properly.

“All the police department can do is respond based on what they’re hearing,” he said. “I’ve been in law enforcement for 30 years, and I can tell you that this is not the first time this has happened.”

“You don’t have time to sit back and think about it for 5 or 10 minutes because if an individual had actually had a weapon — you just can’t do that.”

The lockdown at ECU follows several reports of security-related incidents on North Carolina campuses.

UNC-Wilmington’s Police Chief David Donaldson said Wilmington police are still investigating an armed robbery that happened Monday night near UNC-W’s campus.

“We have walked away a little bit with the lesson that the term gunman invokes one perspective while robber fleeing through the campus invokes another,” Donaldson said. “We are going to evaluate the terminology we use.”

Campbell University issued last week a campus-wide lockdown after a man refused to be served arrest papers on the charge that he stole merchandise from a gun shop. Instead, he locked himself in his home. A SWAT team was called in.

Fayetteville State University also had an incident this week of an armed robbery in a dorm room.

Contact the State & National Editor at state@dailytarheel.com.