Dangerous Hoax Hits Home: CPD Responded to an Active Shooter Call at Stevens

By Dylan Marsh
EAGLE TIMES STAFF
CLAREMONT- Schools across New Hampshire were subjected to a statewide active school shooter hoax on Thursday, December 8, 2022. The Claremont Police Department, along with the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Department, arrived at Stevens High School after receiving a report of an active shooter at the school.

School officials stated that police arrived around 10:15 am and had cleared the school of any danger shortly after 10:30 am. According to Stevens High School Principal Christopher Pratt, he had received an email earlier in the day from the School Resource Officer warning about a school shooting hoax in the area, however, before he could finish reading the email, the police had already arrived at the school.

“This situation was really unique because typically we would reach out to the police, then I would contact the Superintendent and the other schools in the area to inform them of the situation. With this incident, however, we weren’t able to follow that traditional protocol, but I feel like we were able to go into lockdown very successfully,” Pratt said of the actions taken by administrators as well as police to make the school as safe as possible.

After police arrived, the school was placed in lockdown. Once students and staff were safely locked in classrooms, police and school administration staff did a floor-by-floor sweep of the school. Once the sweep was conducted, police then debriefed the staff of the school and concluded that this, much like other schools across the state, had fallen victim to a recent hoax.

Around this same time, several schools across the state received similar threats. Schools in Concord, Dover, Franklin, Laconia, and Manchester among others fell under threat of fire. Later in the Day on Thursday, the New Hampshire Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management released the following statement on their Facebook page;

The Department of Safety is aware of multiple active shooter threats that have been made at schools throughout the state. Multiple state agencies are assisting local law enforcement agencies with these initial investigations. At this time these reports are believed to be a hoax. The New Hampshire Information Analysis Center is heavily involved in coordinating these investigations.

Following the sweep, Pratt said that informing parents became his biggest concern.

“With kids and parents being so in tune with technology, they are able to contact each other so easily now and we wanted to make sure that we were informing the parents of exactly what happened before any confusion could start,” Pratt said of the text and voice messages the school sent out on Thursday.

In recent months, it has been reported that schools across the country have been subjected to both bomb threats, as well as school shooting threats. This year alone, hundreds of schools have received calls similar to the one received across New Hampshire. It is also believed that a string of bomb threats as well as active shooter calls likely came from the same caller with an internet phone number being generated from a caller, likely in Ethiopia. It is also believed that due to the short durations between calls being made that the caller is utilizing a computer program with a predetermined list of phone numbers before calling.

If anyone has any information regarding these hoax calls they are encouraged to reach out to the New Hampshire Intelligence Center.