PERRYSBURG, Ohio — Wood County residents on Tuesday afternoon got the chance to learn about some of the realities of an active shooting.
"I think we'll get some positive responses from this," Wood County Sheriff Mark Wasylyshyn said of the Civilian Response Active Shooter Training hosted at PENTA Career Center.
The Gun Violence Archive describes a mass shooting as a shooting that has "a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident."
As of June 17, there have been 227 mass shootings across the U.S. in 2024, with seven of them happening in Ohio, according to the archive.
So, Wasylyshyn hopes the training can help someone save a life one day.
"It's not to make them experts, but basic, simple things they can do to keep themselves and their loved ones safe and maybe some things they can learn, to save a life," he said.
Participants at the training had the chance to walk through a series of training sessions, including how to stop bleeding and learning the "Avoid, Deny, Defend" strategy.
In the "Stop the Bleed" session, participants learned techniques on how to properly administer CPR, as well as apply a tourniquet and other impromptu medical techniques.
The session on the "Avoid, Deny, Defend" strategy walked people through how to properly react to a shooting, stressing the need for people to never discount a threat and to always be safe and recognize incoming warning signals.
"There are things that happen, sometimes before, that you look for," Wasylyshyn said. "Little warning signs that say 'hey, something's wrong here', or when they're hearing gunshots, instead of sitting there saying 'oh those are just fireworks, or it might be something else', let's take this seriously and say 'hey, maybe that was gunshots', and if it was, what do I need to know to avoid that area?"
Wasylyshyn hopes the event will also inspire more people to show up and take in the potentially life-saving information.
"This is something we will probably offer in the future," he said. "I think we'll get some positive responses from this."