She thought there was a shooting. After mass panic, Missouri teen wants more security
When 16-year-old Keegan Harwood arrived in Des Moines, Iowa for the National Speech & Debate Tournament, she was expecting to spend time with her teammates, compete and have fun. At the end of the week, she wasn’t expecting to fear for her life.
“It was seriously one of the best weeks of my life before this happened,” she said.
On June 19, Jayden Roccaforte, 22, of Wyoming sent tournament goers into a panic at the Iowa Events Center when he climbed onto the stage unauthorized during the Humorous Interpretation Finals. Video shows Roccaforte address the crowd and say, “You want a joke? Alright. Knock, knock” before turning around to crouch down and remove a backpack he was wearing. A participant set to perform on stage at the time was told to “run away.” That message was broadcast over the sound system, which led the crowd to “rush for the exits,” police said.
Roccaforte was a registered participant at the event, according to Paul Parizek with the Des Moines Police Department. He has been charged with disorderly conduct and two counts of possession of a controlled substance. Roccaforte did not have any weapons and police did not find any at the scene.
Harwood, who attends Blue Springs High School, was not in the auditorium during the incident, but five of her teammates were, including Blue Springs student Jackson Koch. Koch says people were “trampled” and he was “shoved and pushed around” as he tried to get out of the auditorium.
“I tripped and fell,” Koch, in a text message, said of trying to evacuate, “but I got up very quickly and then I stepped on a person back trying to get up and start running again.”
Harwood was one floor up with two other teammates looking at event merchandise. She said a text from a teammate outside the venue alerted her about the incident.
“All of a sudden my teammate looks down at her phone and starts freaking out. I look down at my phone too, and I just see this text ... it said ‘run, something’s happening in the convention center. We don’t know,” said Harwood.
‘I have to get out of here’
The sound of an attendee screaming “get out, run” from the stairs sent Harwood running, but only as one of her teammates did.
“I have to decide, am I going to follow her or am I going to stay with our other teammate? So I decide to run, and I asked the other teammate about this. She said it was about a second, but it felt like years for me to make that decision,” she said.
She threw her drink on the ground, yelled to the other teammate behind her, “we have to go” and they both ran to catch up with their friend. Someone told Harwood that a person inside the venue got on the stage, had a gun and might have had a bomb.
“So immediately it clicks with me, ‘oh my god, I have to get out of here,” she said.
Harwood and her teammates ran for safety, once again, this time under the impression that an active shooter was at large. First, they went to a bank and then to a church to seek safety, but were unable to get inside. They ran to an open street block that another competitor told them was more secure. On their way there, the three took off their speech and debate ribbons, fearing that they might make them a target.
At the street block, Harwood called her mom, something she says she didn’t want to do until she was safe.
“I didn’t want to call her before because I was in such a state of danger that if I died, I didn’t want her to have to deal with that and hear me sobbing and screaming,” said Harwood.
Finally, the group was able to get help and take shelter inside the lobby of a nearby apartment building as they waited for their coach.
“We just sit on the stairs. And it’s at this point that I break down because I know I’m safe, but my other teammates, I don’t know,” she said. When the group reunited with their coach, who Harwood decribes as “extremely tough,” they hugged and sobbed, she said.
“I have never seen my coach cry like that, I’ve never even seen my coach cry once, so just seeing the breakdown of all of us was just horrible,” said Harwood.
Piling into a van driven by their coach, members of the team reunited with their teammates as they were located, including Koch, who was with two others. But even in safety, the damage was already done.
No weapon, but a lingering impact
Roccaforte didn’t have a gun, a bomb or any other weapons, but to a now traumatized Harwood, that doesn’t matter. It’s hard to sleep, to eat and leave the house. She doesn’t feel safe in big areas, and she says it’s hard not to fall into depression.
The National Speech & Debate Association said in an initial statement that there were no injuries reported, but police officials confirmed that responding officers reported some minor physical injuries in the crowd. The Star could not confirm a social media report of individuals being taken to the hospital for injuries.
For Harwood, though, the injuries are psychological.
“Even though there might not have been a gun, and that there might not have been a real quote weapon, the effects are still the same,” Harwood said. “And online all I’ve seen are people saying ‘oh, well, there wasn’t a gun so you should be fine,’ but just because there wasn’t a weapon doesn’t mean that the effects still don’t linger.”
Were safety measures in place?
While they initially announced the Thursday competition would continue following the incident, the National Speech & Debate Association later suspended the remainder of the day’s schedule. On Friday, the association heightened security with bag checks, metal detectors, increased police presence and a single point of entry, according to a press release. On-site counseling was also available.
Harwood’s team did not attend.
The association did not respond to The Star’s inquiry about security measures in place before the incident.
“We take this incident extremely seriously. Above all, we are committed to creating an environment where students feel safe and supported and additional security measures are in place,” Director J. Scott Wilcum said in a Thursday press release.
Moving forward, Harwood wants there to be increased security measures for large events put on by the National Speech & Debate Association. She wants to see bag checks, security at every entry and exit point, metal detectors for events with over 500 people, and one security guard for every 50 people in attendance. She also would like to see proper training for coaches on emergency scenarios and resources available to students, including online resources on how to stay safe in the face of an emergency.
“I want people to understand that ‘cause even though we didn’t know that there was no weapon, we still reacted the same. We still ran for our lives. We still tried to escape the best we could, and if he had a gun, hundreds of kids would have been dead,” she said.
