By EMS1 Staff
WILLOUGHBY, Ohio — An old ambulance is undergoing a transformation to help save lives in a different way as a SWAT hostage negotiation center.
A group of high school students at the Northern Career Institute are updating an old ambulance to a fully-functioning SWAT vehicle for South Euclid police, News Net5 reported.
“Oh this is going to be a massive help,” Officer and EDGE hostage negotiator Joe Di Lillo said. “We’ll have this vehicle outfitted with everything that we need in a major crisis.”
The students are smoothing out and repainting the outside of the ambulance and changing the lights to look like other SWAT vehicles. But school Superintendent Stephen Thompson said the vehicle is not the only thing that’s changing. Students are seeing officers in a new light and forming better connections with police.
“It was cool, I got to know them as people instead of police officers,” student Dan Cain told the news station.
The vehicle will be ready in May.