These teachers pulled a prank that went wrong. Someone should have thought ahead that telling kids there was a gunman on the loose so soon after the VT killings was about the worse thing they could have done. I suspect that several teachers will pay for this mistake with their jobs and the tax payers will pay out a settlement to the families.
How would the “prank” have “gone right” in your view?
What pushed this over the line into a criminal assault is the “imminent fear” element of what they did.
If someone doesn’t see smoke or fire, and just hears the buzzer demanding evacuation of the building, then there’s no fear of “imminent injury” from the fire.
But telling the students that it’s “not a drill,” and having a disguised staffer come to the door and pull on it, is intentionally creating reasonable fear of imminent injury or death, and that’s a class A misdemeanor in Tennessee.