Teacher terrified by surprise 'active shooter' drill in eastern Oregon schoolhouse files federal lawsuit

A man dressed in a black hoodie and goggles suddenly burst through her classroom door. He leveled a pistol at McLean's face and pulled the trigger. The terrified teacher heard gunfire, smelled smoke, felt her heart racing, she says.

"You're dead," the gunman said, and stalked out of her room.

But McLean was alive. The hooded man's gun was loaded with blanks, part of a surprise "active shooter" drill at Pine Eagle School District No. 61, a charter school in the tiny eastern Oregon town of Halfway. The gun-toting man was Shawn Thatcher, the school district's safety officer.

McLean was a casualty of what she now describes in a federal lawsuit as a harebrained drill in the middle of an in-service day - April 26, 2013 - that has left her with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The peculiar drill fell on the heels of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, which left 20 children and six adults dead, including deranged gunman Adam Lanza. A story in The Oregonian/OregonLive about the drill went viral.