The CESJDS Upper School campus went into a shelter in place drill at 1:47 p.m. Friday during Dor L’Dor day, after two reported shootings at Westfield Montgomery Mall and the Aspen Hill Shopping Center. The shelter in place at the Upper School lasted only 30 minutes, and the shooter has since been taken into custody by police, and identified as 62-year-old Eulalio Tordil.

The protocol for a shelter in place is that classes take place as usual, but no one is allowed to enter or exit the school building. Many other high schools in Montgomery County were put on some type of shelter or lockdown due to the shootings.

Sophomore Dalia Handelman was at Goldberg’s New York Bagels across the street with her grandmother and fellow sophomore Natalie Granader, and when she returned to the school she was not allowed in because of the shelter in place protocol. They were told to go inside somewhere else safe, but as they were walking back to Goldberg’s Handelman got a call from Dean of Academics Aileen Goldstein saying that the shelter in place was over, and they were allowed back in.

“It was really scary because it made it seem like the shooter was near here, and we’re about to walk across the street,” Handelman said.

Both shooting locations were within a three mile radius of the Upper School campus. Westfield Montgomery Mall is a common spot where many JDS students hang out and go shopping. Handelman said that she would still go to the mall, even given the shooting.

“You hear all about shootings in all these random places and you never think it can happen where you are … this proves that it can happen to anyone, if you are just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Handelman said. “It’s just really scary.”

According to the Washington Post, the Montgomery County and Prince George’s County police say that Tordil is responsible for both shootings. The police had been searching for Tordil since Thursday night when he allegedly killed his estranged wife in the parking lot outside High Point High School in Beltsville, MD.