St. Johns County mother creates character to help teach children about staying safe in school

CarrieAnn Gaines, a mother of two, is passionate about keeping children safe, so she created a character to help teach children about staying safe in school.

The animation is named "Tank the Turtle."

Tank helps explain how kids can protect themselves in an active shooter situation.

“We wanted Tank to be a friendly voice they can understand and conceptualize, and maybe just make this narration a little bit easier," Gaines said.

Gaines owns A Safe Pack, a company that sells bulletproof inserts.

She put a team together to create a child-friendly video about active shooter situations.

Tank comes after St. Johns County parents were upset over active shooter videos that were shown to students.

Some parents said they were too graphic, especially for younger children.

“We heard a lot of people say they were uncomfortable with the video, uncomfortable with the topic," said Gaines.

Alan Fraser is the creator and voice of Tank.

Fraser helped bring Tank to life and will soon finish a roughly two-minute video for Gaines to pitch to local schools with the hope that the video can be used as part of their dialogue when talking to young students about active shooters.

“We want to touch on not just active shooter, we want to talk about safety for kids, we want to talk about bullying," said Fraser.

Cox Media Group