Yale University was locked down for nearly six hours Monday as authorities investigated a phone call saying an armed man was heading to shoot it up, a warning they later said was likely a hoax.
SWAT teams searching the Ivy League campus didn’t find a gunman after a room-by-room search, and the lockdown was lifted Monday afternoon. No one was injured, police said.
“New Haven is safe. The Yale campus is safe,” New Haven police Chief Dean Esserman said.
A 911 call was received at 9:48 a.m. from a man at a pay phone about a mile from the campus who said his roommate was on the way to the university to shoot people, Officer David Hartman said.
Esserman said he was leaning toward the incident being a hoax and a witness who reported seeing someone with a rifle likely saw a law enforcement officer.
“Though it is starting to tilt in the direction of an innocent mistake, it started with a purposeful and malicious call,” Esserman said, vowing to track down and arrest the person who made the call.
Authorities don’t believe that the caller was a Yale student or that his roommate attended Yale, Esserman said. There was nothing specific about the threat, he said, and the call lasted only seconds.
