In between press conferences Howard County PIO Sherry Llewellyn kept people informed via social media (image: WBAL-TV)

Tragedy struck close to home on Saturday morning at 11:15am. What was believed to be an active shooter was reported in the Mall in Columbia, a mall I had spent most of my youth in.

The on-going investigation has revealed that a man had walked into the Zumeiz store on the upper level of the mall and shot Briana Benlol a 21 year old mother and the Assistant Manager at the store and Tyler Johnson, a store employee who had just started working there before the holidays. The mall was immediately locked down and will remain closed through Sunday while the investigation continues. The third fatality was the shooter himself who apparently died of a self inflicted gun shot wound. Of course prayers and condolences go out to all of the victims. Early reports suggest, but have not been confirmed, that this is a domestic dispute between the shooter and Benlolo and that Johnson was caught in the crossfire.

While the entire police and first responder response to the incident has been praised across the web and social media one thing has really stood out as this shooting unfolded and that is the social media team at the Howard County Police Department.

Social media is falls under the watch of civilian Public Information Officer Sherry Llewellyn a 20 year PR pro having spent the last 14 years with the police department. Previously she worked for the American Pediatric Society also in a public relations role. Llewellyn is a graduate of the University of Maryland College Park, obviously a number of years before social media was a thing.

When Llewellyn led the first official press conference at 1:30pm on Saturday afternoon she said “please watch follow our twitter feed at @HCPDNews for the latest official updates”. Now if you’ve seen any of these terrible incidents unfold, typically someone always says to watch websites and social media feeds, but in most cases on the ground reporters are dishing the official sources at every corner. That wasn’t the case with Llewellyn and her social media team.

Llewellyn spoke to Techfaster by email on Saturday evening and said that she personally was tweeting the live updates from the scene, and those updates were plentiful which made the factual course of the story stay inline with what investigators were uncovering. The official Howard County Police feed was quick to quell rumors that it was a random active shooter. They were quick to report the number of victims, the injuries sustained and the reasons two other mall patrons were taken to the local hospital.

As promised, as soon as the next of kin were identified the Twitter feed was quick to report the names of the victims and every single piece of pertinent information at the scene.

The department’s Twitter feed and Facebook page are covered with comments from people in the media and others who have commended the job that they’ve done on social, using it as a tool to keep everyone informed. Llewellyn acknowledged to reporters that the quickest official updates would be through Twitter, a vote of confidence for the social network.

In addition to supplying timely information to press and the public the Howard County Police Department used their social media feeds to answer questions from concerned citizens. Some of the people who had been evacuated from the mall were concerned with when they could retrieve their keys and personal items. Llewellyn’s team jumped into action and got answers on that and every question that came in. Llewellyn was assisted by Mary Phelan who was handling repost and Facebook. “Mary also has been helping me respond to questions on Twitter, as well.  Want to make sure to give credit where due!” Llewellyn told us by email.

Those questions included confirming or denying speculative reports from major media outlets in an effort to keep the facts away from fiction.

While this is the first time the department had this many eyes on their social media account the department has been using social to reach out about active crime, investigations and safety issues regularly.