EVANSTON, Ill. (AP) — Police say that the report of a gunman in a residence hall at Northwestern University in suburban Chicago was a hoax.
ALL CLEAR. Police have determined that the report of a man with a gun in Engelhart Hall was a hoax. It was made in a call to the Evanston Police Department. No danger to the community exists. Police are investigating the false report.
— Northwestern (@NorthwesternU) March 14, 2018
Evanston Police Commander Ryan Glew says the Wednesday afternoon call was a “swatting” in which someone calls in a false report in the hopes in prompting a police department SWAT team to respond.
Nobody was injured and Glew says the student who the caller reported had been shot by a boyfriend has been located and she is safe.
Glew says the call came from outside the Chicago region — southeast of Rockford in northern Illinois — and that the apartment that police responded to had been vacant since around Thanksgiving.
The call prompted Northwestern to urge people in the area to “shelter in a safe place and stay until further notice.”
Such calls can be extremely dangerous. In December, police who responded to such a hoax call fatally shot a man who answered his door in Wichita, Kansas.
Two blocks away from my son’s off campus house last year @ Northwestern. Apparently one of his old roommates has a cell phone picture of the gunman…he is now back in California thankfully. Shut down the NRA and destroy the guns!
Toss-up whether its Brucey Rauner or Jeanne Ives…
It IS graduate housing; it is not “on campus”, but a couple of blocks beyond campus. I once lived at that address.
Is there really nothing in the Constitution to protect the rights of the vast majority who don’t want to live (or die) like this? It’s time for some sanity in politics.
Well there’s Article V, but that’s a very tough row to hoe.