Police: Too soon to tell if Elder High hoax shooting call is related to others nationwide

Elder High School is safe and no threat was identified after a false shooter threat was reported at the school Tuesday morning, officials said.

A caller reported a shooting at the Catholic high school West Price Hill, the Cincinnati Emergency Communications Center tweeted just before noon. The center said Cincinnati police responded to the scene as a precaution.

Several minutes later, Cincinnati police said the school building had been cleared and nothing was found.

A swath of school districts across the country, including Iowa and Akron and Dayton, Ohio, also received hoax active shooter calls Tuesday.

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's intel unit will investigate the call's origin and coordinate with other law enforcement agencies if it's determined the call appears related to other incidents, Cunningham said.

"The person could be in California for all we know," or it could even be a robocall, Cunningham said.

Hoax 911 calls are becoming more common

This is far from the first hoax call reporting an active shooter at a local school district this school year, leaving parents and family members concerned for the well-being of their loved ones.

Earlier this month, law enforcement responded to Mount Healthy High School on March 1 after a report of an active shooter threat that proved to be a prank call, school district officials said.

The caller reported the incident as being in room 55, which doesn't exist in the building, said Bryce Blanton, spokesperson for Mounty Health City Schools. The school building, which also houses the junior high school, was placed on lockdown with students and teachers sheltering inside classrooms, he added.

A parent of the nearby Mount Healthy Preparatory and Fitness Academy received a call from their child, who was inside the school, mistakenly reporting there was an active shooting there, Mount Healthy police said. Officers responded to that building and cleared it as well, police said.

The Mount Healthy Preparatory and Fitness Academy sits adjacent to Mount Healthy City Schools' central administration building and Mount Healthy South Elementary School. Both of those buildings were placed on an external lockdown as a precaution, Blanton said, meaning no one was allowed inside the building but students and staff weren't made to shelter in place.

In September, schools across the country were hit with dozens of false shooting reports. In that wave of reports, Princeton High School was forced into lockdown after a caller falsely reported that 10 students were injured in a shooting. The FBI investigated and that call was later traced to Modesto, California.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Is Elder High School false shooting call related to others nationwide?