It began as an ordinary Tuesday morning at the Red Caboose Day Care Center on Williamson Street in Madison, Wisconsin. Staff were settling children into their routines when a 39-year-old man entered the center armed with two meat cleavers. He had no known connection to the program.
According to contemporaneous reporting from the Badger Herald, police were called at approximately 9:06 a.m. The man attacked a 55-year-old employee, Gary Dosemagen, who was seriously wounded while protecting children in his classroom of two and three year olds. The center’s executive director, Wendy Rakower, called for a fire drill to begin evacuating children and worked to distract the intruder while Dosemagen removed him from the classroom. Other teachers instructed children to put their heads down and physically blocked their view of what was happening.
Madison police officers Phil Yahnke and Shane Pueschner responded, confronted the intruder inside the building, and used deadly force after he refused to drop the weapons and made a movement that placed people in immediate danger. No children were physically injured.
Dosemagen, Rakower, and both officers received the Medal of Valor. Mayor Dave Cieslewicz praised the staff for putting their lives on the line for the children. Dosemagen continued working at Red Caboose and retired in 2018 after 38 years in early childhood education. The center is still operating today.
Why This Incident Still Matters
That Tuesday was March 9, 2004 — more than two decades ago. The incident remains one of the most instructive case studies for early childhood programs. Not because it is the most recent or the most widely known, but because of what the staff did in the moments before police arrived.
This was not a firearm incident. It was an edged weapon attack inside a working child care program with toddlers present. That distinction matters because it reinforces something we emphasize in every ICP training: the threat your program prepares for may not look like the scenario you picture. Preparedness is not about predicting the exact emergency. It is about building responses that work across situations.
What the Staff Did
Several actions stand out, even twenty two years later.
Rakower’s decision to call a fire drill gave staff and children a familiar routine to follow during an unfamiliar crisis. The children did not need to understand what was happening. They knew what a fire drill meant. They knew what to do. That familiarity created movement, order, and distance from danger at a moment when those things mattered most.
Dosemagen placed himself between the threat and the children in his care. He was seriously injured doing so. His actions were courageous, and they deserve recognition.
Other staff shielded children from what was happening around them, both physically and through calm direction. They were not trained tactical responders. They were early childhood educators who acted to protect children with the tools and instincts they had.
The Deeper Lesson
The staff at Red Caboose acted with extraordinary courage. But courage is not a preparedness plan.
Programs cannot be built on the assumption that someone will physically confront an armed intruder. Early childhood employees are educators and caregivers. Direct physical confrontation carries enormous risk and should be understood as a last resort when a person reasonably believes serious harm is imminent and no safer option is available.
The goal of preparedness is to reduce the likelihood that any employee is ever in that position. That means secured access points that create time and distance before a threat reaches children. It means communication systems that allow staff to warn each other and call for help immediately without leaving the classroom. It means every employee understanding that they are authorized to act, to lock a door, to move children, to call 911, without waiting for administrative direction. It means practicing those responses until they feel routine.
The fire drill worked at Red Caboose because the staff had done it before. The response was not invented in the moment. It was recalled.
What Your Program Can Do
This incident raises questions that every early childhood program should be able to answer confidently.
Can an unfamiliar adult access occupied child care spaces without being identified and admitted by staff? If someone is asked to leave, does your team have a protocol for what happens next, including what to do if that person returns? Can every employee initiate a protective response without waiting for the director? Do staff have more than one way to communicate an emergency across classrooms, including outdoors and during nap times? Have you practiced your lockdown and evacuation procedures under realistic staffing conditions, including during opening, closing, and lunch coverage? Have local first responders toured your facility and reviewed your floor plan?
These questions should not be answered by reviewing a binder. They should be tested through walkthroughs, drills, and tabletop exercises. Exercises should be developmentally appropriate and should never expose children to frightening simulations. The adults, however, must work through realistic scenarios so their responses are practiced before they are needed.
How ICP Can Help
ICP’s Bees to the Beehive program is our signature active threat preparedness training, built specifically for early childhood settings. It teaches staff to respond with confidence in a calm, emotionally safe learning environment, without fear tactics, simulated violence, or unannounced drills.
Our Security Assessment program evaluates your facility’s access control, communication systems, evacuation routes, and emergency procedures with recommendations tailored to your site and your staffing reality. And for the communication gap this incident highlights — staff being able to reach each other instantly without leaving children — ICP’s secure walkie talkies were designed for exactly that.
The staff at Red Caboose Day Care Center protected children under circumstances no educator should have to face. We honor what they did by making sure today’s programs are better prepared, better connected, and better supported than they were in 2004.
The most important emergency decisions may be made before police arrive. They may be made by the teacher standing nearest the door. They may be made while holding a child.
Our responsibility is to make sure early childhood professionals do not face those moments without training, practice, and workable options.
Don’t be scared. Be prepared.
Visit icp.us/training to explore all available training options, or contact us to start a conversation about your program.