A deluge of ‘swatting’ reports of shootings across Pennsylvania and at least one in New Jersey shut down classes Thursday, as U.S. schools remain on high alert following the horrific mass shooting at a school in Nashville earlier this week.
Police responded to reports of shootings at two high schools in Pittsburgh as well as several in the Lehigh Valley, and possibly more, but as of late Wednesday morning, no shootings had been confirmed. In a tweet, Pennsylvania state troopers in the central part of the state said that calls to local schools were “believed to be computer-generated swatting calls.”
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One of those schools was Bellefonte Area High School, just minutes away from Pennsylvania State University’s main campus, according to the Centre Daily Times.
A caller reported early Wednesday that five students had been shot at Phillipsburg High School in New Jersey, across the Pennsylvania border, according to Lehigh Valley Live. Other calls were reportedly made to schools in Allentown and schools in three districts in the surrounding area, Lehigh Valley Live reported.
Videos posted to Twitter showed a heavy police presence at two Pittsburgh Catholic high schools. Pittsburgh’s public safety Twitter account said in a tweet shortly before 11 a.m. Eastern time that students and their parents were to gather at one of the schools, and that while police were investigating, there was “no evidence” of an active shooter. It is so far unclear if these schools were also the targets of swatting calls.
Later, Pittsburgh police said one of the schools was “still locked down.”
The University of Pittsburgh’s police department said in a tweet that they were “aware of a situation involving several ‘swatting’ calls in the northeastern United States to schools.”
Emergency services in Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, said in a statement Wednesday that 911 “received three separate calls reporting that there is an active shooter in three separate schools.”
“We are also aware that there are similar reports coming in for schools outside of the county. In each instance, law enforcement is responding but believes that these are false reports,” Allegheny County 911 said in the statement.
The apparently false alarms come just two days after a 28-year-old former student opened fire at a Christian school in Nashville, armed with two assault rifles and a handgun that were all legally obtained. The shooter killed three nine-year-olds as well as three members of the school’s staff.
In addition to the Nashville shooting, similar “swatting” calls have been reported throughout the U.S. over the past week. In Rhode Island, at least 14 municipalities received such calls reporting school shootings Monday, Rhode Island State Police said. Reports were also made about shootings at more than a dozen schools in Massachusetts Tuesday morning, all of which were determined to be hoaxes.
Several schools in both Ohio and Iowa were subjected to threats as well last week, according to local reports.
After police confirmed today that there was no active shooter in Phillipsburg, Warren County (New Jersey) Prosecutor James Pfeiffer told Lehigh Valley Live that the call was a “false alarm, Thank God,” but also “extremely frustrating.”
“The emotional upset is incredible for everyone,” Pfeiffer told Lehigh Valley Live.
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