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On The Scene

Okwu: Parents get lessons in fear

CNN's Michael Okwu
CNN's Michael Okwu

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FAIRFAX COUNTY, Virginia (CNN) -- Despite the chilling threat against children made by a person who authorities believe is a sniper, Washington-area schools were open Wednesday.

Police revealed one day earlier that the letter found at one sniper crime scene warned, "Your children are not safe anywhere, at any time." Despite that, many Maryland and Virginia schools decided to reopen after some had been closed for two days.

CNN Anchor Paula Zahn talked with CNN correspondent Michael Okwu about the atmosphere outside West Potomac High School in Virginia.

OKWU: Yes, they're open, but there's certainly a lot of fear here. I'm standing in Fairfax County in something of a high school zone just over my shoulders, an alternative high school, and up the street is another high school, and I want to give you a sense of what the topography is here. This landscape is typical of high schools in the suburban Washington area.

It's basically [a] building set along a line of trees, and I was talking to parents and students this morning, who all say that they think about that every day they come to school now. Never before has forestry been so deeply associated with danger.

OKWU: Now cars and buses filed in this morning, many more so, I am told, because so many parents wanted to make sure to usher their kids in personally to school. ...

Schools here are still in a code blue, which means that they are locked down in their classrooms. The windows are shut, the shades are drawn. They cannot walk in the hallways unless they are accompanied by some sort of a school monitor or by a teacher, which by the way may not be enough for so many of the parents that I talked to yesterday.

A handful of [parents] told me they are seriously considering not bringing their kids to school, having them stay at home until the sniper is actually caught. ...

ZAHN: Is attendance off there in Fairfax County yet?

OKWU: We don't know about attendance at this point. It's still very early. If there is any indication -- if the traffic is any indication of attendance -- it was fairly high here in Fairfax County.

Just to be clear about this, [we are in] Fairfax County, not Montgomery County [Maryland], where five of the first shootings occurred and [Tuesday] morning's shooting occurred.

We were there [Tuesday], Paula, and I can tell you that attendance was really, really low. In fact, one of the schools was really, really low, and I can tell you, one of the schools very close to the site of the shooting, attendance was down by 95 percent.

And it was at that school and in that district that still many of the parents told me that they are [serious about] keeping their kids away from school until the sniper is caught.



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