Wichita North High among Kansas schools that received hoax calls of threats

Wichita North High School was among several Kansas high schools that went into lockdown Wednesday because of a hoax call about an active shooter.

The “hoax call” at North was made around 8 a.m. The school went into lockdown while Wichita police, school administrators and security checked the building and cleared it in about 15 minutes.

The Wichita Police Department “believes this to be another hoax call, similar to the one we received in September,” USD 259 spokesperson Susan Arensman said.

Wichita police said they think the call at North High was connected to others around the state.

High schools in El Dorado, Topeka, Manhattan, Lawrence and Garden City all had false reports of an active shooter as well around 8:10 a.m., 8:15 a.m., 8:30 a.m., 8:30 a.m. and 9:15 a.m.

Junction City Police Department said on Facebook that they had a hoax call at 8:41 a.m. of an “active threat” at the high school.

“I can tell you that schools in all parts of Kansas were affected, but at this time we aren’t sharing a list of each of the schools/jurisdictions who received the calls,” Kansas Bureau of Investigations spokesperson Melissa Underwood said in an email.

The swatting calls have been happening across the country recently. At least eight schools went into lockdown in Minnesota because of hoax calls on Monday and Tuesday, CBS reported. Last week, Colorado Public Radio reported at least a dozen school districts were affected by hoax calls.

The FBI in Kansas City did not immediately reply to a question about the connection between the swatting calls across the country and in Kansas.

El Dorado Public Schools spokesperson Kimberly Koop said the caller used a Google-generated number to call in the shooting at the high school. The school district locked down the elementary, middle and high school, Koop said.

The call was made to City Hall and that employee forwarded on the call to 911, El Dorado police chief Mike Holton said. As police searched the high school, police learned that it was possibly a hoax call and that other cities were having swatting calls where the caller “poses as a school teacher from a specific school” and reports a school shooting, he said.

Koop said the lockdowns at the elementary and middle school were lifted about 15 minutes later and the high school 10 minutes after that after police determined it was a hoax call, Koop said.

Lawrence Police Department tweeted a video showing officers responding to the 911 call of an active shooter at Free State High School. The video showed body, dashcam footage and surveillance video of officers flooding out of the department.

In the video, you can hear emergency communications traffic. An emergency communications official says the caller even gave them a name of the reported shooter, though the name given was redacted in the video.

Calls in September also affected multiple schools. The FBI’s Kansas City division said it had several swatting calls at schools in Kansas and Missouri but didn’t say what schools. Wichita police spokesperson Chad Ditch said he was not aware of any arrests in the September call. Bridget Patton, a spokesperson for the KBI in Kansas said they didn’t have “any information pertaining to any federal charges” from the September incidents.

Swatting is the act of making a false or prank call to law enforcement in an attempt to send armed officers to a particular address. A swatting call made in 2017 from a man in Los Angeles left Andrew Finch of Wichita dead after he was shot at his doorstep by Wichita police.