'Swatting' call sends Michigan school district into lockdown on Halloween

NEWAYGO COUNTY, MI – A Michigan high school was the target of a “swatting” incident on Halloween, prompting local law enforcement to lock down and search all schools in the Grant Public School District.

Agents from multiple agencies responded to the report of an active threat placed on a third-party crisis intervention line at 11:55 a.m. on Thursday, October 31. The person who alerted the crisis line stated that an unknown man was outside. Grant High School with an AR-15 rifle, preparing to enter the school.

Officers immediately responded to the threat and all Grant Public Schools were placed on lockdown mode for safety reasons, according to a news release from the Grant Police Department.

Upon arrival at the school, officers saw no traces of the reported suspect. Additionally, no school in the district reported a suspicious individual entering their facility.

But due to the nature of the threat, law enforcement officers from Grant PD, with assistance from the Newaygo County Sheriff’s Office, Michigan State Police and the Fremont Police Department, conducted a thorough search of every school in the district.

No threat was located and the lockdown was lifted upon completion of the search, the news release said.

During the course of the investigation, it became clear that the original call to the crisis line came from an IP address that matched at least thirteen other calls in the United States, all occurring at the same time.

In each of these incidents, the reported threat was the same, and only the name of the alleged suspect was different, Grant Police Chief Jon Patterson said.

A search for the IP address used in all these threats showed that the address originated outside the US.

The incident comes two days after a 15-year-old Florida boy was charged for allegedly making calls to multiple Jackson County schools and a doctor’s office on Oct. 13.

The term “swatting” comes from a person’s intention to get a “SWAT” team sent to a location by making a false report, often about a high-risk situation. The prank calls are used to harass, intimidate, and even endanger the target.

The Grant incident is being classified as a swatting incident and police are working to get information to the Michigan Intelligence Operations Center (MIOC) and the FBI for further investigation, Patterson said.

Making terrorist threats is a crime punishable by up to twenty years in prison.

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