'It's what no ... (Iowans) want to hear': 30 schools locked down over fake shooting reports

Dozens of Iowa school districts reported that fake threats of active shooters had been called in against their school buildings Tuesday morning, prompting a huge law enforcement response and, in at least one instance, a medical helicopter prepared to treat potential victims.

As reports poured in, families received texts from their children that their schools were on lockdown and many were sheltered inside locked classrooms. Among them was father of four Terence Rice, whose two daughters attend Boone High School.

At 9:30 a.m. — about five minutes after the lockdown began — Rice received a text from his daughter in 11th grade that said: "The school is on lockdown."

“I literally wanted to cry because when you hear the schools are going on lockdown … the first thought was ‘There's a shooting,’" he said.

Like in instances across the state, Boone officers and first responders from across the county responded as trained and found the call was a hoax, said police chief John Wiebold.

Initial reports show the fake calls were made to schools in Cedar Rapids, North Liberty, Iowa City, Clinton, Davenport, Muscatine, Creston, Cerro Gordo County, Lee County, Story County and Polk County, including Des Moines Public Schools.

More:See what Iowa communities got school shooting swatting calls Tuesday

In all, the Iowa Department of Public Safety had received tips involving about 30 locations across the state, said commissioner Stephan Bayens, who addressed the threats at a news conference with Gov. Kim Reynolds on Tuesday. A full list of locations was expected to be released late Tuesday.

"At this point in time we don’t believe there are any active threats to any schools in Iowa," Bayens said Tuesday morning. "This appears to be an orchestrated swatting incident that is making its way across the state."

"Swatting" is a term used to describe a prank call to emergency services that results in a large emergency response.

Bayens said there are indications that the same person or people were behind the calls, which began in Clinton at about 8 a.m. He said the male voice appeared to be from the same person, who spoke with an accent, and that the caller was making his way through school districts from east to west across the state.

Other states have experienced similar calls in recent months, including Colorado, Minnesota and Illinois, Bayens said.

Reynolds said her staff told her about the incidents when she arrived at her office in the morning. She said she was glad to learn the calls were swatting incidents and that there was no danger.

"It’s what no governor, it’s what no parent or anybody — superintendent, teachers, kids — want to hear," Reynolds said. "And we’re grateful, just so thankful that that’s what it was."

Reynolds' news conference Tuesday originally was intended to launch an app called Safe+Sound, which allows students and teachers to anonymously report potential school threats. The swatting calls highlight the need for schools to be vigilant, she said.

More:New Iowa app allows anonymous reports to curb school threats, violence 24/7

"We want to make sure that we’re doing everything possible to give these schools and school districts, the administrators and the teachers and the kids the knowledge to report or respond and get in front of it," she said.

Bayens said his department is working with local, state and federal law enforcement to investigate the calls. But he said he suspects they may have come from outside the United States.

He praised local law enforcement for responding quickly and taking the threat seriously.

"It is a challenge but unfortunately it’s one that we have to take seriously," Bayens said. "The one moment you kind of brush it aside as a hoax or an inconvenience is the one that you don’t want to let slip through your fingers."

Parents: 'You don't know how to react'

Despite the calls being fake, parents of Iowa students said the situation felt very real.

Rice said he and his 19-year-old son drove over to the school after his daughter's texts came in.

The roads around the high school were blocked with emergency vehicles, and officers, some visibly armed with rifles, were patrolling outside the building, he said.

For Rice, his daughter's texts took him back to the fatal shooting at Cornerstone Church in Ames in June, when he was in the back cleaning a grill. His children were in the church when shots were fired outside.

It was emergency personnel's demeanor outside the school Tuesday that calmed him.

"We stuck around for about five minutes and then as we saw cops talking and just being leisurely," he said. "They weren't scrambling. As soon as I saw that, I was like, 'Well, things must be OK.'"

Fort Madison parent Brian Wright said he received a text from his daughter, a senior at Fort Madison High School, about the lockdown. She said she believed there was a gunman in the building, police were outside and they were locked in a classroom.

Wright, who was at work, said he could only pray and trust that staff and law enforcement would keep students safe.

"It's just something you don't expect to happen and you don't know how to react," he said. "You put it all in the hands of the individuals and the authorities to make sure that this is taken care of."

Schools across the state react to the swatting calls

The string of calls started just after 8 a.m. in Clinton, an eastern Iowa city on the Mississippi River.

High school staff did not even know there was a problem until emergency personnel arrived at the school around 8:08 a.m., said Clinton Superintendent Gary DeLacy. School starts at 8:30 a.m.

Officials at Clinton High School initially posted on Facebook that someone had called 911 and said there were shots fired at the high school. The school canceled classes for the day and said some students were sheltered in place while Clinton police combed the building.

“You had a SWAT crew coming in with guns raised,” DeLacy said. “So, I can imagine the trauma and the raised blood pressures of that experience and it was so unnecessary.”

Later, the school posted that "there is no evidence of any shooting at Clinton High School. Several large schools in eastern Iowa have also received 911 reports of active shooters."

Two 911 calls to the Johnson County Joint Emergency Communications Center give a clearer picture of what law enforcement across the state were dealing with.

The caller said there was an active shooter in area schools and provided details including an address and classroom number, according to audio recordings released to the Iowa City Press-Citizen. In the case of Clear Creek Amana in Tiffin, the caller said there were three students injured. During both calls, the caller sounded as if he were out of breath before the call abruptly ended after about 2 minutes.

Iowa City Police wrote on Twitter that they were in communication with the Iowa City Community School District regarding swatting calls that referenced active shooters in the schools. "These calls are not credible and there is no reason for concern at this time," the department said on Twitter.

Muscatine superintendent Clint Christopher and police chief Tony Kies said a fake threat also was called in to the Muscatine Police Department on Tuesday morning.

"Muscatine Police responded accordingly, swept the entire building, and once they informed us there was no credible threat, we could resume the school day," the two posted on Facebook. "While this is certainly a disruption to the day, we will do our best to resume school as normal at Muscatine High School."

The Des Moines Police Department received a swatting call around 9 a.m. from a non-local number “claiming that a student was shot at Roosevelt High School,” said Phil Roeder, Des Moines Public Schools spokesperson.

The police department and the district’s public safety team responded, but the call was found not to be legitimate, Roeder said. Classes were not disrupted because Tuesday was a staff professional development day, he said.

Nevada Community School District Superintendent Steve Gray said there was also a call about his district. Gray said law enforcement inspected the middle and high school campus as a precaution but determined emergency protocols were not necessary, and normal school operations were not interrupted.

Creston Community School District's swatting incident triggered a brief lockdown.

Calls familiar across the U.S.

Swatting is a nationwide problem.

The Nebraska State Patrol reported March 2 it had received information on several false reports of school shootings that had been placed to 911 call centers across the state that morning. Local media in Kansas reported the day before that schools in that state had been targeted by similar calls, and law enforcement responded to schools in South Dakota last October for similar calls there.

The Nebraska State Patrol noted swatting calls had been reported in 2023 in states including Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Texas and Vermont.

The Anti-Defamation League — an organization that seeks to fight hate and bias, particularly antisemitism — reported last year that while it appears swatting continues to be a growing problem, the FBI did not yet track it as a unique category of crime, and local police departments often don’t document it separately from other false reports.

People have been sentenced for federal crimes related to swatting in jurisdictions across the country, revealing that attackers can be located far out of state from their targets — including, but by no means limited to, schools — and that attackers have included members of hacker collectives or white supremacist groups.

George Shillcock contributed to this report.

Stephen Gruber-Miller covers the Iowa Statehouse and politics for the Register. He can be reached by email at sgrubermil@registermedia.com or by phone at 515-284-8169. Follow him on Twitter at @sgrubermiller.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa schools receive fake active shooter calls in 'swatting' incidents