Former UCCS leader says campus was not prepared to respond to February shooting [Video]

COLORADO SPRINGS — In the wake of a deadly shooting at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) in February, a former school leader has filed a federal complaint against the university, claiming the college was not prepared for the crisis.

Arthur Simental was the Director of Emergency Management at UCCS from Jan. 2023 to July 2024. He was in charge of the university’s emergency response to the February shooting that left two people dead. Colorado Springs Police said a gunman shot and killed his roommate, 24-year-old Samuel Knopp, and 26-year-old Celie Montgomery inside a UCCS dorm room on Feb. 16.

“I felt sick. I felt like, again, this was the worst-case scenario, the nightmare that I had spent, you know, a year saying we needed to do something about and here we were,” said Simental.

When he started his position in Jan. 2023, Simental said the emergency department he …