BELLE — Maries County Sheriff’s Office on July 13 assisted in a Missouri Sheriff’s Association academy class active shooter training exercise at the Belle High School (BHS) with several law enforcement officers and volunteers.

Chief Major Scott John said the training started at 6 p.m. and was productive.

“Training went excellent,” he said. “We left about 10:30 p.m. last night. We did all kinds of scenarios, adding some of our own training. We had adult and juvenile volunteers and four cadets from the academy come to train with us.”

John said the group trained for four different incidents in the four-and-a-half hours they were at the school, including hostage situation, active shooter situation, barricaded subject situation, and multiple shooters.

“We had 12 officers in training,” John said. “We sent them through three or four at a time and all of the groups successfully completed it.”

Deputies who participated in the training were John, Ryan Fowler, Tiffany Johnson, Tanner Hinson, Jeff Younger, Cpl. Tim Edwards, and Det. Dale Harp. Academy cadets were not named. John and Sheriff Chris Heitman served as instructors.

Maries County Sheriff’s Department is scheduled to lead its own active shooter training course on Aug. 18 in Vienna.

“There was no school staff there,” John said. “This was a law enforcement response training.”

Superintendent Dr. Lenice Basham authorized the use of the school for the training. John said she was pleased to hear law enforcement were conducting a training exercise.

“We will be teaching ALICE to the faculty at 1:30 p.m. on Aug. 18 and when school is out, we are going to do the same training for law enforcement again as we did Thursday.”

For more information, contact John at the Maries County Sheriff’s Department, 573-422-3381.