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Emergency response drill at River Park
Officers train for gunman
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Officers creep around the outside of Saint Thomas River Park with weapons drawn Friday morning during a practice drill at the hospital. They entered the building and pinpointed the intruder.

An active-shooter drill Friday morning at River Park Hospital helped local emergency agencies prepare themselves for a mad gunman unleashing an unprovoked attack in this community.
“It helps us get on the same page,” said McMinnville Police Chief Bryan Denton of the drill involving local law enforcement and emergency agencies at Saint Thomas River Park Hospital. “We can assess our response through drills like these.”
The drill began just after 9 a.m. when 911 dispatched police to the hospital, telling them there was a man with a gun who had opened fire inside the facility. Dispatchers were quick to warn the fictitious shooting was a drill to avoid a War of the Worlds-type incident where scanner listeners might believe the armed assault was real.
As emergency responders took their positions around the hospital, a tactical team made its way into the building and began sweeping the hospital, looking for the gunman. When he was found, barricaded in a room minutes later, a negotiator spoke with him on the phone and convinced him to surrender. The entire drill took about half an hour.
“We streamlined it a bit since we were conducting it in a working hospital where there were patients present,” Denton said, noting future drills at other facilities will be more involved.
E911 director Chuck Haston said such drills are important because it gives emergency responders an idea of how they will communicate if an assailant opens fire.
“Back at the Twin Towers, a major problem was you had fire departments and ambulance personnel and many of them couldn’t communicate with one another because of the numerous frequencies,” Haston said. “Drills like this help us learn how we will communicate between agencies during a time of emergency.”
Ambulance service director Brian Jennings said the hospital drill was important for another reason.
“The hospital is where we take people once something like an active-shooter incident happens,” Jennings said. “This adds a new dimension to an already stressful situation.”
Police were joined at the scene by members of the Sheriff’s Department, Emergency Management Agency, McMinnville Fire Department, and Warren County Ambulance Service.

Local farm partnership brings fresh beef to Warren County Schools
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Warren County Schools has beefed up lunch menus this school year through a new community partnership. Thanks to a collaboration between the district’s School Nutrition Department and Barton Creek Farms, students at Warren County High School, Warren County Middle School, West Elementary, Eastside Elementary, and Dibrell Elementary are enjoying locally sourced, farm-fresh beef in their lunches as part of a pilot program.

The initiative, spearheaded by Terri Mullican, Director of School Nutrition, has already shown great promise in its first few months. The partnership with Barton Creek Farms, located in Rock Island, Tennessee, ensures that the beef served is not only local to Warren County but of the highest quality. Barton Creek Farms specializes in farm-to-fork beef, with grass-fed and grain-finished cattle. Each calf is born and raised in Rock Island and goes through USDA-inspected processing, ensuring it meets the strictest safety and quality standards.

“When the opportunity arose to provide fresh, local beef, we knew it was a no-brainer,” Mullican said. “The fact that it’s a product from right here in our community makes it even more special. We can’t wait to implement it district-wide.”

Barton Creek Farms delivers fresh ground beef to the district monthly, and the nutrition

department incorporates it into homemade recipes such as lasagna, meatloaf, chili, and tacos.

As of now, the beef is being served at five schools, but the ultimate goal is to expand the program to all ten lunch-serving schools in the district.

The pilot program originated from a conversation between Mary Roller of Barton Creek Farms and Mullican. Roller, recognizing the farm’s potential to support local schools, reached out to gauge the district’s interest in serving local beef to students. Around the same time, a Warren County school board member contacted Mullican to share information about a similar partnership in neighboring Dekalb County, which helped push the initiative forward.

The timing worked in the district’s favor, as the nutrition department was able to fund the purchase of the beef using existing resources, eliminating the need for additional funding. Now that the pilot program is enjoying a successful run, the department has budgeted to extend the partnership district-wide for the 2025-26 school year.

Dr. Grant Swallows, Director of Schools, praised the program’s economic approach to student nutrition.

“This pilot is a perfect example of how we can use local resources to continue providing nutritious, healthy meals for our students,” he said. “We are grateful for partnerships like this one that benefit both our students and our local community. We always strive to support our local businesses when we can because our community is so good to us.”

In addition to working with Warren County Schools, Barton Creek Farms also partners with local restaurants to offer farm-fresh beef on their menus. The farm’s offerings include ground beef, steaks, roasts, and custom cuts by the quarter, half, or whole cow, meeting diverse consumer needs.

As the program continues to grow, the district hopes to expand its focus on farm-to-school meals, benefiting students’ health and connecting them to the agricultural roots of the community