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Students And Parents Feel Shock, Relief After Scary Situation At CCP

By Syma Chowdhry

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Students watch a scary situation unfold before their eyes.

Alfred Semper says, "It's not an action movie. This is crazy. I'm nervous."

Reports of an armed man on campus sent shock waves throughout the student body. (See Related Story)

"I got a phone call from my mother telling me that someone has a gun in the building."

Students were in their classrooms when they heard the commotion of police and the SWAT team.

Soohyeon Kim says, "The SWAT team came into the classroom and asked, 'is everything alright?' And he said 'just stay in the classroom and lock the door.'"

At some point, police started to evacuate the students.

PHOTOS: From The Scene

Many received a text alert telling them to take shelter.

Denise Morse says,"This happened in broad daylight, now I'm scared."

Now that the alleged gunman is in custody, students are criticizing the school's security.

"That's not the best feeling. We come here to learn to get degrees to make futures for ourselves and this is what we have to deal with."

In addition to faculty and students, there are children on campus in the school's daycare.

Parents frantically arrived to pick up their kids.

Yaya Horne says, "Honestly just the panic, it was kind of like you hear the words gunman and it's like, okay, I'm on my way!"

Cicely Reece agrees, "My first thought was I need to go get my daughter, my second thought was they are probably handling it appropriately."

After a couple of hours police cleared the campus, but the school remained closed.

Malik Thompson says, "It could've been a lot worse, you need to protect the students."

The school has a total of 34,000 students thought the year.

Those CBS 3 spoke with criticize Community College of Philadelphia, saying they need to pump up security measures.

Denise Morse says, "I'm not interested in really coming back to this school if they don't up their security, no matter how small the campus is."

School will remain closed tonight but officials say classes will resume Thursday.

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