'Swatting' call sends full police response to elderly West Valley woman's home


Save Story
Leer en español

Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

WEST VALLEY CITY — A SWAT team and officers from several agencies responded to a West Valley house late Monday on a report of a possible shooting and a suicidal person.

But when officers arrived, they found only a 94-year-old woman who was completely unaware of what was going on.

West Valley Police Chief Lee Russo on Tuesday said the "swatting" call put both the elderly woman and police officers at risk, and tied up valuable resources that could have been used to help people in actual need. Fortunately, officers were quickly able to recognize that the call was false, and no doors were broken down or shots fired.

"This could have ended a lot differently. We have a call of somebody who has committed a very serious assault, saying that they've shot people in a home, they're not going to surrender themselves, they're armed, they're prepared to engage with the police. This could have ended much differently than what it did," he said.

"Swatting" is when a person makes a 911 call to report a false crime, usually of an extremely violent nature, with the intent of getting a SWAT team to respond. The caller is able to manipulate computers and other technology to make it appear that the call is coming from a certain address, even though the caller may actually be in another state or even another country.

Just before midnight on Monday, 911 dispatchers received a call from a person claiming he had shot his parents and wasn't going to give up peacefully, Russo said. The caller's number was registered to a phone at a residence near 1200 West and 3900 South.

The caller used a name "that was common to the immediate family" of the elderly woman, Russo said, leading detectives to believe that her home was targeted and not picked at random.

Because of the nature of the call, Russo said every officer on duty responded. When police were unable to get anyone to answer the door, a SWAT team was called out, as well as officers from neighboring jurisdictions, such as Unified police.

"You're thinking, 'Do you have victims inside that you can rapidly access and rescue?' You have this dynamic situation with the safety to the officers because you're dealing with someone who says they're an armed suspect," he said.

But officers on scene also quickly realized the situation wasn't adding up.

"As this is all happening, our investigators on the scene and our incident supervisors are beginning to notice that there are some inconsistencies in some of the information that's being provided," Russo said.

After contacting other family members, police soon realized the 911 call was likely a hoax.

"We were able to back away, calm things down and then ultimately make contact with an older resident at the location that has difficulty hearing, and that's why (she) hadn't heard our initial contacts when we were calling out and knocking on the doors," the chief said.

"So this is a very heightened situation that we're responding to. But at the same time, you also have mechanisms in place that are questioning everything that we're doing, that are asking those questions, looking for those details and finding those inconsistencies, and then running that information down and saying, 'Wait a minute. This isn't matching.'"

From the time the first officer arrived until contact was made with the woman, about 90 minutes had passed. Russo said the woman was understanding of why police were there in light of what had happened.

The situation was not only dangerous but tied up "an amazing amount of resources," he said. "The other piece of this is there were a number of other calls that were on the 911 network when this happened. There were a couple of domestic incidents that were occurring … and there are no cars to assign to that call, and that creates a worry."

As of Tuesday, Russo did not know a motive for the swatting call or why someone would want to target the woman. But he said investigators were "aggressively" attempting to track down the caller.

"Typically there is a footprint left digitally through these kinds of systems," he said. "We are going to do everything we can to find the source of this call."

Most recent Utah stories

Related topics

Utah
Pat Reavy

    STAY IN THE KNOW

    Get informative articles and interesting stories delivered to your inbox weekly. Subscribe to the KSL.com Trending 5.
    By subscribing, you acknowledge and agree to KSL.com's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

    KSL Weather Forecast