Every time someone engages in swatting, they are putting people’s lives at risk. It’s a despicable act.
The Chicago Tribune reports:
Police: Call of shots fired at Northwestern graduate dorm was ‘swatting’ hoaxA call of shots fired that sent scores of heavily armed officers to a Northwestern University graduate dorm Wednesday afternoon was apparently a case of “swatting,” a false emergency designed to draw a large police response.A caller reached the Evanston police from somewhere near Rockford around 2:15 p.m. and said he had shot his girlfriend at Engelhart Hall, just west of the main campus at Emerson Street and Maple Avenue. Alerts were issued and teams of police were dispatched, but officers found the woman — a Northwestern student — unharmed with “no evidence of a victim, scene or gunman,” said Evanston police Cmdr. Ryan Glew, a spokesman for the department.“That residence has been vacant since before Thanksgiving,” Glew said of the dorm room at Engelhart. “We’re preparing to call it a swatting incident. … She was not in any danger.”The alert initially went out to students and staff shortly before 2:30 p.m., warning them to stay away from the area of Engelhart Hall, which has apartments for Northwestern graduate students and their families. Even after police found no evidence of a victim or weapon, officers continued their search and Northwestern tweeted that people inside Engelhart “should remain behind locked doors.”The school issued an all-clear around 4:30 p.m., more than two hours after the call was made. “The report of a man with a gun in Engelhart Hall was a hoax. … No danger to the community exists.”“I just spent an hour huddled on the floor with students,” Mei-Ling Hopgood, an associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism, tweeted after the university confirmed the campus was safe.
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