Gunman Scare at Yale Believed to Be a Hoax

Photo Credit: stepnoutYale University began the day Monday with a campus lockdown and swarms of law enforcement officials, but ended it with sighs of relief as reports of a gunman appeared to be a hoax.

Around 9:50 a.m. a call lasting a few seconds came into 911 from a pay phone off campus saying matter of factly that the caller’s roommate “was heading toward campus with a gun” to shoot people, said Officer David Hartman, a spokesman for the New Haven police. Half an hour later, the university broadcast an alert via text message, on Twitter and through blue security phones stationed around the campus and inside buildings. One Twitter post around 10:45 a.m. read: “Unconfirmed report of a person on campus w/ a gun. Please stay indoors.” Twenty-one minutes later the report was listed as confirmed.

“This is NOT a test,” Yale’s emergency management website said.

The campus, all but empty at the start of Thanksgiving break, was locked down, streets were immobilized, and local business was brought to a halt over the course of the day. Representatives of campus, city and state police departments, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, federal homeland security, Connecticut homeland security, as well as the F.B.I. and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives coordinated their efforts during a search of Yale’s Old Campus, where many freshmen live. Students still on hand watched through their windows as police officers, some in camouflage and helmets, spread out with their weapons.

Several people reported seeing a man with a gun, Officer Hartman said. “There is a fairly well-confirmed report of somebody on campus with a long gun,” he said a couple of hours after the search began. The police also were checking surveillance videos from the area.

Read more from this story HERE.