The FBI is investigating a wave of active shooter hoaxes at US universities which have triggered chaotic armed police responses as students return to campus for a new semester.
Since Thursday, nearly a dozen universities have been hit by swatting hoaxes – leading to panic as students, parents and faculty flee.
Authorities say swatting – making prank calls to emergency services to deploy a Special Weapons and Tactics team (Swat) – has grown in popularity.
In a statement issued in response to the latest wave of hoaxes, the FBI encouraged the public “to remain vigilant and immediately report anything they consider suspicious to law enforcement”.
Villanova University, a Catholic university in Pennsylvania, has been hit by two separate threats in just four days. Student Ava Petrosky was singing in an orientation Mass on Thursday when people in the audience began to run.
“Honestly, at that moment I thought, ‘I’m gonna die,'” she told CNN, explaining how she joined the crowd and ran for cover.
Hours later on Thursday, a swatting hoax hit the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, sending the campus into lockdown.
“In two seconds, the whole classroom evacuated,” senior Luke Robbins told the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
“Run outside, there’s cops with ARs [assault rifles] in the hallways, and they’re like, ‘Hey, go up this way,’ so we get out. Run across the street. There’s even more cops telling us to go.
“I mean, it was just hectic. It’s crazy.”
False reports have also hit Iowa State University, the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Northern Arizona University, the University of South Carolina, Doane University, the University of New Hampshire, the University of Colorado Boulder and Kansas State University, according to local media reports.
The FBI has declined to comment on the latest wave of hoaxes, but in a statement to BBC News said: “We are aware of recent swatting incidents involving a number of colleges and universities and are working with our law enforcement partners.”
“The FBI is seeing an increase in swatting events across the country,” the agency said.
Each false report “drains law enforcement resources, costs thousands of dollars, and, most importantly, puts innocent people at risk”.
The FBI created a database in 2023 to better track hoax threats. The database uses information provided by local police agencies, and has so far tracked “thousands of incidents,” the agency said.
Swatting hoaxes have led police to accidentally shoot – and sometimes kill – the victims of the hoax.
Last year, a British man became the first in the UK to be charged with committing a swatting hoax, after police in the US state of Maryland responded to a fake call accusing someone of taking a hostage, and shot the victim with plastic bullets.
The FBI statement notes that several young men have now been jailed for calling in swatting hoaxes. They include a man extradited to the US from Romania, a Wisconsin man who hacked doorbell cameras to livestream the police raid, and a 19-year-old American-Israeli teen convicted of making thousands of threats to Jewish institutions around the world.
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