Making their phone ring could get them killed

Recently I was talking with a friend whose daughter is a student at Florida State University and was in the Student Union on April 17, 2025, when a gunman opened fire, killing two and wounding several others. Campus police quickly took the gunman down, preventing a much greater tragedy.

My friend told me that his daughter sent him a brief text saying she was okay and running away from the scene.

He did what most fathers would naturally do: He called her.

To which I responded, “That was the worst thing you could have done.”

I’m not known for being tactful.

But the reality is this: If your loved one is in an active shooter situation, you should not try to call them until you know for absolute certain that the danger is over.

Of course you want to find out as soon as possible that they’re safe, but there’s nothing you can do from a distance. As hard as it is, you need to wait.

Here’s why:

When a shooter is indiscriminately spraying bullets into a group of people, you don’t want to do anything that will attract attention to your loved one. That means you don’t want to make their cell phone ring or flash or even vibrate.

June 12, 2025, marked the ninth anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history. That tragedy was the catalyst for my Conversations book, How to Survive an Active Shooter: What You do Before, During and After an Attack Could Save Your Life.

As I watched news coverage of the anniversary, I saw some survivors talk about how the shooter fired repeatedly into some of the victims, that he turned away from them and then turned back to fire again. The expert who worked with me on the book explained it was likely that those victims’ phones were ringing, and the shooter was firing at the noise and motion.

If you find yourself in an active shooter situation, your first priority is to escape. If you can’t, get rid of your cell phone.

If you have time, call 911 so dispatchers can hear what’s going on, but then put the phone down and get away from it. Don’t let your phone make you a target for a shooter.

If your child, spouse, or other loved one is in an active shooter situation, wait for them to call you, or wait until law enforcement has contained the scene and made an announcement about reunification procedures. Those minutes will be the most agonizing of your life, but resisting the impulse to call someone who may be hiding from a shooter could save their life.

For more about this, including excerpts from How to Survive an Active Shooter, read my blog, “Why You Should Never Try to Call a Loved One in an Active Shooter Situation”.