A Man Who Identified Himself as Tom Gomez Calls the Central Dispatch to Report a Fake Mass Shooting at Springfield High School
At 1:15 pm on September 15, a man who identified himself as Tom Gomez called Sangamon County Central Dispatch in Illinois to report that two gunmen had shot a dozen students at Springfield High School. According to audio from the call, the man was specific. The caller, breathing heavily, told dispatchers that he was locked inside a math classroom with other students and that the two men, both dressed in blue pants and green jackets, were killing students in the adjacent classroom: room 219.
Within five minutes, the police were at the high school, where they were told there had been a mass murder. According to police records, the high school does not have a room 219. There was no shooting at all.
The practice of swatting, in which someone makes a fake emergency report to get a team dispatched to their location, has been around for over a decade. (The US Department of Justice has used the term “swatting” since at least 2007.) While no one has been seriously injured in the recent surge of swatting attacks at schools, these pranks can be deadly. In 2017, Wichita police shot and killed a 28-year-old man at his front door while responding to a false report. This recent spree appears to be related to the North High School in Wichita.
In audio of the call to Sangamon County Central Dispatch, the caller indeed had a discernible accent. The caller to the call for service was a foreign speaking male and he was speaking very quickly with the Middle East. The recordings obtained by WIRED seem to be of the same person as the person in the Springfield call, with the caller describing a fake shooting with nearly the same details. In total, law enforcement officials from six states—Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Ohio, and Virginia—all described receiving similar calls. In each call, officials confirmed that a man with a heavy accent called from an out-of-state number and reported a mass-casualty attack. In some instances the caller reported that a shooting occurred in a room number that does not exist, and included details on the shooter’s color of clothing.
There is a false report about Springfield High in Illinois and there is a voice saying the same thing as the caller targeting other states. One from Ohio is embedded below.
At least sixteen Louisiana schools were targeted in September. An explanation is obvious, that’s according to Lieutenant Lane Windham of the Alexandria Police Department. “I don’t think this is some prank. He says it is terrorism. “When someone’s trying to terrorize the teachers, parents, all the students, and the community, what else can you call it?”
The parents of the survivors of the Robb Elementary School massacre have filed a federal lawsuit against several entities, including the gun manufacturer, the city, and the school district.
The district had previously fired the chief of the department, Pete Arredondo, who state officials have said was the incident commander during the shooting and bore responsibility for delaying a confrontation with the gunman for over an hour after the shooting began. The gunman killed 19 children and two teachers.
A Uvalde Shooter Charged with Arrelevance in a School Shooting: Daniel Defense, Firequest International, Inc., and Motorola Solutions
The complaint states that Daniel Defense chose not to look at the effects of their marketing strategies on the health and well-being of Americans and chose not to look at the cost to families and communities in Texas.
Days before the shooting, the complaint notes, the Georgia-based company tweeted an image of a toddler holding an assault-style weapon with the caption: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
The claim also says Firequest International, Inc., which manufactures accessory trigger systems, similar to illegal bump stocks, sells its products to untrained civilians, young adults and minors in Uvalde. These types of devices allow semi-automatic rifles to fire more rapidly, similar to automatic weapons.
According to the legal document, the Uvalde school shooters background check was clean, and that Oasis Outback knew he was suspicious and dangerous and sold him guns and bullets. The store owner and his staff did not act on their suspicions about the purchases.
The gunman legally purchased two AR platform rifles at a local federal firearms licensee on May 17 and on May 20. According to officials, he bought another 450 rounds of bullets on May 18.
Later, when he saw school district police chief Arredondo inside after the gunman was killed and talked to him, he told investigators he then thought Arredondo was in charge. The Uvalde school board dismissed Arredondo in August, but he is still fighting to get his job back.
Memos written just two days after the May 24 massacre and reviewed by CNN detail some of the DPS involvement in the hesitant but chaotic law enforcement response to the shooting in Uvalde, Texas. No action was taken to help those that were trapped with the shooter and an initial approach that was aborted was the only action taken. There were two teachers and nineteen children dead in the massacre.
The suit claims defects in products were factors in the response to the shooting as well as the city’s acting police chief, Lieutenant Pargas. Motorola Solutions, Inc.’s radio communications devices, which were used by some first responders, “were defective and unreasonably dangerous because they did not contain adequate warnings or instructions concerning failure during normal use,” said the claim.
Schneider Electric failed to lock the door as planned after being shut, according to lawyers.
According to Schneider Electric, the tragedy that happened in Uvalde was an “unspeakable tragedy”. “We are reviewing this recent filing but cannot comment further on pending litigation.”
Daniel Defense, Oasis Outback, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, FireQUEST International, Pargas and Arredondo do not respond to CNN requests for comment.
The Dallas Police Department’s Response to the Robb Elementary School Shooting: Comments on a Charged Pseudoscalar Officer
A previous version of this story had an extra person in it. That person is not a party in the complaint and the name has been removed.
HOUSTON — The police department in the Uvalde, Texas, school district was suspended on Friday amid ongoing questions about the police department’s response to the Robb Elementary School shooting.
The officer who was responsible for Mr. Arredondo, and two other district employees, have been placed on administrative leave. The statement said that the director of student services had decided to retire.
A Texas state police captain tried to delay a law enforcement team entering the classrooms to end the Robb Elementary massacre and is now among those under investigation after an account from someone at the scene that he ordered his officers to stay out of the school in the initial response to the shooting, sources tell CNN.
“Hey, this is DPS Captain Betancourt. The team that’s going to make breach needs to stand by. At 12:14 p.m. on May 24, the man ordered the team that was going to break it to stand by, as heard on the audio from a police radio broadcast.
The lieutenant wrote that he had driven from some 40 miles away at speeds up to 130 mph to reach the scene after hearing someone shout out, saying that all of the department should be on a perimeter.
A DPS sergeant added in his memo: “As this was clearly against established training, we both decided to enter the building where the shooter was located.”
Sources close to the inquiry said that the most senior officer known to be being investigated had little to do with the operation until after the shooter was killed.
In the course of the investigation, Betancourt told investigators he had no first-hand knowledge of what was going on, including that a specialized Border Patrol tactical unit, BORTAC, was confronting the shooter, according to sources familiar with the investigation. Sources said that he ordered the team to stand by because he believed a better unit was on its way.
The evidence that was reviewed by CNN and recorded by sound system suggest that the officers never issued substantive orders and were not in control. The director of the Department of Public Safety has criticized the police chief of the school district for the “abject failure” of a response. Arredondo has said that he did not see himself as the incident commander.
The interviews from the days after the event offer the first direct accounts of the officers that are now being scrutinized by the inspector general.
Investigating the Robb Elementary Shooting at 11:36 a.m., when the on-scene commander of the DPS elementary school was activated
And Victor Escalon, the regional DPS director for the South Texas Region that includes Uvalde, said Betancourt had texted him at 12:09 p.m.. That text read: “Initial info one person possibly a teacher shot in head, one officer shot, kid has AK 47, CNU [specialist negotiator team] has been activated, suspect is barricaded. Troopers who are medics have been deployed. Drone team is on its way,” the sources said.
It was at around 12:45 p.m. that Betancourt arrived. As he was near the school, he assumed Nolasco was the on-scene commander.
Betancourt was asked if he talked with anyone about why entry was not being made to the classrooms and he said he did not, sources told CNN, remembering only that there was talk about negotiating with the shooter.
He told investigators that he had issued the order to stand by because he thought there was a better team headed to the school.
The sources familiar with the investigation told CNN that at least two officers said it wasBetancourt who helped alert them to the attack at Robb Elementary.
A sergeant said he had received a text about an “active shooter” incident from Betancourt at about 11:37 a.m., raising questions about Betancourt’s claim that he only became involved later.
McCraw and other DPS leaders have refused to discuss the internal investigations or release information until the investigations are complete at the request of local District Attorney Christina Mitchell Busbee. Her criminal investigation may take years and she has said she will charge anyone who has committed a crime at Robb Elementary, including law enforcement officers.
CNN is in a group of news organizations that are trying to get the records regarding the investigation, including body camera footage and radio transmissions which have been kept from the public.
911 Calls About Multiple Stabbings at Green Valley Elementary School: A Caller from a 911 Caller in Monrovia, Maryland
That caller was student Khloie Torres. She was a young girl at the time. It was 40 minutes after her first call when law enforcement forced their way into her classroom.
According to reports, the newly surfaced recordings include more than 20 calls, including those between officers and dispatchers, and reveal a chaotic response without clear communication. At least one time a dispatcher gave misinformation to personnel.
The law enforcement response has been criticized since the shooting with agencies blaming each other and failing to take responsibility. Several top officials have been fired.
After a responding cop’s wife was shot and called him saying she was “dying”, officers didn’t go into the classroom.
“We’re taking too long,” a medic says, according to reports. That was minutes before Khloie Torres started her third 911 call. She survived the shooting.
Officers said they knew the gunman was in one of the rooms, but did not know what was happening behind the closed doors because they did not hear screams or cries, despite hearing several gunshots ringing out.
He acknowledged there were victims at 12:20 p.m., saying on footage obtained through another officer’s body cam that “We have victims in there. I don’t want to have any more. You know what I’m saying?”
When the students and teacher arrived at the cafe, the teacher called the store and said there were multiple stabbings at the school and explained to the people on the phone what happened.
Shortly before 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, deputies received a call about multiple stabbings at Green Valley Elementary School in Monrovia, according to a news release from the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office. It’s roughly 40 minutes west of Baltimore.
Instead, deputies quickly found out there had not been any stabbings in the school but that 27 students and a teacher were missing, the sheriff’s office said. Authorities soon found all the students and the teacher at a local cafe, the sheriff’s office added. All of the missing students were accounted for and brought back to their families, authorities said.
The teacher apparently tried to call the front office to request permission to take students outside, but did not receive a response, the sheriff’s office said.
Authorities say the teacher decided to lead the students to the cafe due to her involvement in emergency management procedures.
She has the children remove all of their brightly colored clothing and accessories and remove her brightly colored shirt to avoid detection as they walk through the woods, the sheriff’s office said.
An investigation of a threatened juvenile juvenile juvenile detention at a school in Latifake, Turkey, on April 8th, 2015
Although we are happy that there was no real threat, it was upsetting for students involved and the community at large. We regret that this happened,” the school district added.
Authorities said that she was not arrested or charged as a result of her being taken into custody. She was taken to a hospital for evaluation but was not handcuffed, they added.
The school district held a meeting for parents of the impacted students to get more information and services for the kids, as well as additional mental health staff to support them, according to officials.