Man With Pellet Rifle Triggers KB School Lockdown 

Miami-Dade Police in tactical gear walk at the Key Biscayne K-8 Center as nervous parents watch after a lockdown Aug. 29, 2019. Dozens of officers responded when police found a man shooting iguanas with a pellet gun outside the school. (Key News/Tony Winton)

A man shooting iguanas with a pellet rifle triggered a school lockdown that sent upwards of four dozen officers clad in tactical gear to the Key Biscayne K-8 Center Thursday, police said. 

Units from Key Biscayne, Miami-Dade County, and school police converged on the school, while a police helicopter circled overhead. Other schools on the island and the Community Center were also placed on lockdown as a precaution. 

As the event unfolded, nervous parents went to the school while social messages careened around the island.

The man is in custody and will likely face charges, said Police Chief Charles Press. 

Press said officers responded to a report of a man with a rifle near the school and arrived on campus within seconds. 

“We train for a reason,” said Press. “If we had to wait for the County, it would have been too late” for officers to respond in time if the event had involved a real active shooter. He said County units had to travel from Doral.

“This is a perfect display of how we train and respond,” Press continued. “Our officers train on when to engage and when not to,” he said. 

Press recorded a short video to describe the department’s response

Nervous parents wait outside the Key Biscayne K-8 Center after during a lockdown triggered when a man with a pellet rifle was shooting iguanas near the school, according to police, Aug. 29, 2019 (Key News/Tony Winton)

Resident Tim Gamwell, whose home is across the street from the school, said he’d seen a man a few houses down shooting iguanas with a pellet gun a few days earlier. The man, who he didn’t know, said the iguanas were eating his flowers .

After the all-clear was given, children raced from the school and into the embraces of worried parents. 

One of them was Key Biscayne Mayor Mike Davey. 

“It’s crazy,” he said. “ I am very relieved that this was not an attack on our school. I am extremely proud of the conduct of our officers,” he said in a Tweet.