WELLINGTON, Fla. _ A report of gunshots has stopped a practice football game between Palm Beach Central and William T. Dwyer high schools, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office has confirmed.
A helicopter landed on the field, and a man was being treated on the Palm Beach Central track.
At the first report of trouble, the game stopped; players and coaches left the field and fans began moving out of the bleachers in confusion. Law enforcement officers with rifles were seen running.
"Deputies have arrived on scene and are currently gathering more information. We do not believe this is an active shooter incident," spokeswoman Teri Barbera said.
Palm Beach Central sophomore Leonardo Moreno, 15, was in the stands Friday night when he saw the football players running off the field for cover.
"I saw people running and screaming and crying and was like, oh my God, what happened?" he said.
Someone told him there had been a shooting so he squatted down in the stands, then stood and started to run. He found his friend and younger brother before finding a way off campus and toward Forest Hill Boulevard.
There he finally reached his mother, Veronica, by phone. Tearful and shaking, she embraced them in the parking lot of the Chase Bank at Forest Hill and State Road 7, where she picked them up.
Leonardo said this was his second high school football game. "I had so much fun at the last one and then this happens," he said, his voice shaking.
Lynn Monnette had come with her husband and another son to see her son Matt, who plays offense for Dwyer. As the fourth quarter ran down, the normal hum of the crowd was interrupted.
"We heard four pops. It was under where the band sits at the south end of the bleachers," Monnette said as she sat in traffic trying to get out of the parking lot. Behind her, sirens wailed.
Within seconds, she said, "shoes were flying everywhere. Personal belongings. And people were screaming and running."
It took only a few more seconds, she said, for a massive police presence to arrive.
"We saw lights instantly," she said. "We're all waiting and finally the school security came through and said, 'We're evacuating. The police want us evacuated. We need you to leave now.' That's when we saw the SWAT people."
She said she was able to connect with her younger son, who had been with friends in another corner of the stands, and with Matt, who'd been herded into the Central locker room with the rest of his team. Dwyer players, the visitors, had no locker room to go to and were led to a corner of the field.
"He (Matt) said when he heard the shots he started running off the field," she said.
