(TNS) — Hoax active-shooter alerts locked down some Georgia schools on Wednesday, prompting huge emergency response as desperate parents tried to locate their children.
It started at Savannah High School in Savannah and spread to at least eight other schools in what appears to be a “swatting” prank, in which fake emergencies take law enforcement to unsuspecting locations.
“Sometime around 8:30 a.m. this morning, a call came in at our district operations center stating that there was an active shooter at Savannah High School and that six people were shot,” said Sheila Blanco, public information manager at the Savannah Chatham County Public Schools told the Daily News.
The call, of course, “prompted a massive response,” she said. “It was quite a relief to get there and find out within minutes it was a hoax. Some scary moments driving over there.”
Police departments from the nine Savannah District communities responded, as did the school district’s fully accredited police department, the US Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Georgia State Troopers. Roads around the school have been closed.
“You have to take it seriously and go through all the steps,” Blanco said, adding that it took 1.5 to two hours for police to comb the building and send a dog through. “It’s been a pretty scary morning for a lot of our students and parents.”
Although no one was physically injured, the trauma was palpable and played out locally and on social media.
“I can tell you I’ve been at school under lockdown for the last two hours, it’s been very hard not to lose my cool and cry,” wrote Lindsey Jones, who was at school at the time, in a Facebook -Comment confirmed by The News. “It’s heartbreaking that we even need to know what to do in situations like this. I’m glad it was a joke. But for the last two hours I thought my heart would pound out of my chest. And we were only in lockdown as a precaution.”
Governor Brian Kemp promised to punish those responsible.
“School security in several coastal counties was unexpectedly put to the test this morning due to a cruel hoax,” he said in a statement. “Rest assured that we will pursue the criminals who orchestrated these scams with every available resource. The FBI is actively investigating these acts of domestic terrorism and we will continue to work diligently with them to ensure these perpetrators are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
©2022 New York Daily News. Visit nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
