Call falsely reporting shooting at Elder High similar to last year's hoax at Princeton

Cameron Knight and Quinlan Bentley, Cincinnati Enquirer
·2 min read

At 11:50 a.m. Tuesday, a man calling himself Brown Smith reported four students were shot at Elder High School. The call sounds similar to the call from a hoax at Princeton High School last September.

The callers had the same accent, tone and cadence. Both calls were hard to understand. Both used phone numbers based far away from Cincinnati.

In both cases, the false reports came amid a rash of hoax calls across the country.

The hoaxes, also known as swatting, happen when a person calls in a report of a shooting or threat at a specific place. These calls generate a large law enforcement response and create panic both among students and their parents.

More than 30 occurred on the same day as one at Princeton High School. Tuesday, school districts across the country, including Iowa, Akron, Lewis Center and Dayton, Ohio, also received hoax active shooter calls.

A 911 call from Delaware County, Ohio, on Tuesday had the same voice as the call about Elder and used the same details about four students being shot in a bathroom.

More:Calling in a hoax emergency or school shooting could become a felony in Ohio

On Tuesday, the Elder caller said he was in a bathroom and saw a student shoot four other students. He said he could see blood on the floor, the shooter had fled and he had locked the bathroom door. Police were quickly dispatched to the school, but said nothing was found.

In Akron, the caller making the false report also said four students had been shot.

Following the hoax in Princeton, The Enquirer determined many of the calls made in Ohio appeared to be placed by the same person. In that case, the call appeared to be placed by a number in California.

No injuries were reported after an apparent hoax caller told authorities that a man had just shot four students and barricaded himself inside Coventry High School on Tuesday in Coventry Township near Akron.
No injuries were reported after an apparent hoax caller told authorities that a man had just shot four students and barricaded himself inside Coventry High School on Tuesday in Coventry Township near Akron.

Tuesday's call had a Honolulu area code. Authorities repeatedly tried to "ping" the number to find its location, according to police records.

Lieutenant John Cunningham, a Cincinnati Police Department spokesperson, said it's too soon to tell whether the call made to Elder is related to similar incidents reported around the country Tuesday. The department said Wednesday the situation was under investigation by its intelligence unit but had no further comment.

In September, the FBI said it was working with local law enforcement in connection with "the numerous swatting incidents wherein a report of an active shooter at a school is made." The agency declined to comment on details then and had not replied to requests for comment about the Elder hoax at the time of this report.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: 911 call for shooting at Elder similar to last year's hoax at Princeton