Savannah-Chatham schools: Hoax shooting confirmed for Savannah High, reunification underway

According to officials with the Savannah-Chatham County Public School System, no one was hurt and there was no active shooter at Savannah High School's campus on Wednesday morning, dissipating the districtwide police response and crowds of anxious parents who'd gathered along Pennsylvania Avenue in the rain to await news.

District officials have confirmed that an early morning 911 call claiming six people were shot at Savannah High School was a hoax, and that two other Lowcountry school districts, such as Brunswick, had received similar threats Wednesday morning, according to Sheila Blanco, spokesperson for Savannah Chatham County Public School System (SCCPSS).

Blanco said at least five law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, responded to the 911 call.

Initial reporting: Hoax confirmed at Savannah High School after reports of active shooter: Here's what we know

"Once they got here and they went into the school and then began getting students out of the school, they started searching. There have been no injuries. No one was found that was shot or injured in any way," Blanco said.

The rest of SCCPSS was put on "soft lockdown" while emergency personnel confirmed Savannah High School was safe, and Blanco said the district had been fielding calls from concerned parents at other schools all morning.

"This is an isolated incident as far, as we know, and isolated phone call," Blanco told members of the media. "And all the schools in the district were put on a soft lockdown, basically restricting movement, just as a precaution."

How will guardians be reunited with students?

The district initially directed parents and guardians towards the Pennsylvania Avenue Recreation Center to be reunified with their students, but Blanco said a formal reunification plan was being finalized and sent out to parents.

She did not know whether class would be cancelled at Savannah High School for the rest of the day.

For more than an hour Wednesday morning as parents, onlookers and the media awaited information on the incident, fears and rumors swirled over what could have occurred on the Savannah High School campus. Kasceem Frazier picked his son up around 9:30 a.m., the boy visibly shaken, and said the students weren't aware of what was happening, just that they had been placed under an active shooter threat during first period.

Blanco said the delay in information was intentional.

"What has taken so long as the (Savannah Police Department) has been going room by room by room to clear up the school will make sure that they weren't missing anything, but there has been no one injured," she confirmed Wednesday morning.

The district brought counselors to stay on-campus, should students and employees need someone to talk to, Blanco confirmed.

Who called in the fake shooting threat?

While Blanco could not provide details on who the hoax caller was, she said Wayne and Glynn County received similar calls this morning and the FBI was working to track down the number from which the calls were made.

"Sometime right around 9 a.m. or shortly thereafter, (SPD) received a call from the county 911 dispatch center saying that six people have been shot at Savannah High," Blanco said.

She said the hoax caller gave a description of a suspect. When emergency personnel arrived on the scene, they found someone who matched the suspect and took them into a police vehicle for questioning, but no charges have been filed.

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Blanco also squashed rumors that Wednesday's incident was connected to a conflict that boiled over from a Savannah High School athletic game on Tuesday evening.

"Since this doesn't appear to be isolated to just Chatham County, I tend to doubt it. It's because — from what I understand — it's a very similar phone call that came in to two other counties in the area," she said.

Calling in a fake shooter threat to 911 is an increasingly national trend called "swatting." And while these hoax calls are becoming more frequent across the country, Blanco said the district must take them as seriously as any other threat.

"You always have to send all resources in, if even if (police) feel that something is a hoax... you never know when something's going to be an actual incident and you have to send in all your resources whenever a call like this comes in," Blanco said.

Blanco said the district will have an "after-action meeting" in the coming days to assess the response and how to improve upon it in the future, while the district's police department will be aiding in the investigation into the hoax caller.

Zoe is the Savannah Morning News' Investigative Reporter. Find her at znicholson@gannett.com, @zoenicholson_ on Twitter, and @zoenicholsonreporter on Instagram. 

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Shooting Savannah GA: School system confirms hoax; reunifying students