False report of energetic shooter at Claremont McKenna School

A “swatting” name about an energetic shooter triggered a large police response at Claremont McKenna School on Thursday night, a day after a related false report triggered panic and evacuations at Loma Linda Kids’s Hospital in San Bernardino County.

College students had been warned to shelter in place on the 5 undergraduate faculties within the Claremont consortium after the Claremont Police Division obtained a name warning of a gunman on campus round 4:45 p.m., in keeping with the division.

“The caller informed dispatch they had been in a restroom on the Claremont McKenna School campus, holding somebody captive and threatening to hurt them,” the division mentioned in a assertion. “Additionally they acknowledged that they had a bomb and had been going to stroll round with a rifle and shoot anybody they noticed on the campus.”

A number of regulation enforcement companies responded and carried out a search of Claremont McKenna School and the close by Pomona School, Scripps School, Harvey Mudd School and Pitzer School campuses. There was no signal of an energetic shooter or any victims, police mentioned. The shelter-in-place order was lifted at 7:30 p.m.

“I used to be simply doing a little homework — I’ve a paper due — and I simply get a textual content: ‘potential shooter,’” a scholar recognized as Gabe informed KTLA. “I look out the window, SWAT groups, cops, and it mentioned you bought to get off campus, get to security and lock the doorways. We simply began going away from campus.”

An analogous sample performed out at Loma Linda Kids’s Hospital on Wednesday night after the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Division obtained a name from somebody who mentioned he was contained in the hospital armed. The decision prompted an enormous regulation enforcement response earlier than an all-clear was issued round 8 p.m.

“Regulation enforcement officers responded from two counties, taking away their means to deal with emergency calls in their very own communities,” San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus mentioned in an announcement. “All of this brought on by a hoax to falsely painting a catastrophic occasion.”

The U.S. Division of Homeland Safety mentioned in a bulletin final 12 months that swatting calls “usually are available in clusters” and “are sometimes made to harass, intimidate, and/or retaliate towards their supposed goal.”

Based on Homeland Safety, in January 2024 the FBI and Nationwide Counterterrorism Middle tracked greater than 100 threats to greater than 1,000 areas in 42 states throughout a one-month interval.

Final month, a younger Lancaster man was sentenced to 4 years in jail after he made practically 400 swatting calls to excessive faculties, universities, locations of worship and authorities officers.

Thursday night’s name, although faux, triggered actual worry on campus.

In a 6:15 p.m. e-mail, Claremont Mckenna School Dean of College students Jimmy Doan mentioned he knew the scenario was “very scary” and despatched out a kind to college students to trace their areas, in keeping with reporting by scholar newspaper the Claremont Unbiased.

Courses had been canceled throughout the incident however will resume Friday, in keeping with a Pomona School assertion on X. The faculty suggested college students that counseling assets stay accessible at Scholar Well being Providers till 9 p.m. Thursday and that 24/7 psychological well being providers can be found by way of TimelyCare’s on-line platform.