LITTLETON, Colo. -- It's the reality of school in this day and age: teachers and students have to be prepared for anything.
On Tuesday, the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office trained teachers at Newton Middle School how to respond to a bleeding victim in the event of a serious accident or a school shooting.
"We’ve had some other school districts that have expressed interest, but this is the first school that embraced it this fully," said Rob Dahlberg, a Deputy Sheriff and School Resource Officer at Newton.
Dahlberg says the the department and Littleton School District also helped purchase "stop the bleed" kits for every classroom at Newton. The kids have gauze, a tourniquet and other supplies.
During a training session Tuesday, teachers practiced applying pressure to an open wound, and using a tourniquet.
This is the second year of the program for some teachers. While they hope they never need the training, they feel it's important to learn any tool that could save a life.
"We would do whatever it took, I really feel like everybody here would bust a move if we needed to," said language arts teacher Karin Sviegel.
Social studies teacher Leslie Gardner agreed.
"It’s an awful thing and yet you’re grateful that we are learning how to help (the students) if you needed to," she said.
Newton Principal James O'Tremba says the training and "stop the bleed" kits in every classroom are well worth the investment, noting that this could help in any situation where there's an injury.
"They can apply this anywhere in their lives, too, it's not just for a mass shooting, or an incident like that; we have shop class, we have science labs," he said.
