The report of an armed man on his way to Chico schools and Chico State that caused schools to lock down and forced police to prepare for a similar event in the future has been determined to be a hoax.
On the Tuesday back from the three-day Labor Day weekend, students and faculty at Chico State received a message stating that there was a potential shooter running loose nearby with an unclear destination.
University Police Chief John Feeney described what happened that day.
“On Tuesday, Sept. 6, Chico PD received a call from a non-emergency line from a woman caller stating that she overheard four Muslim students arguing with a Somali male over on some apartments on West Sacramento,” Feeney said. “She also stated that the Somali male then was going to take a gun and go to campus.”
Feeney and Chico Police Chief Michael O’Brien were communicating throughout the incident.
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| Chico Police Chief Michael O’Brien |
“I got the same message, and it was something about a man with a gun,” O’Brien said. “Be on the lookout. Not a lot of specifics but that was put out.”
Not knowing the severity of the situation, he made several decisions with the safety of the community in mind.
“As those things were going on, we had resources in place and obviously notifications were made to the two entities,” O’Brien said. “We had officers all over the area as we worked the situation and we started to try to pinpoint where the call was coming from, where the caller was, because at one point they provided information, we asked a specific question and the phone went dead.”
It didn’t take long with both departments working in collaboration to determine that the threat was not imminent, said O’Brien.
“We didn’t have the exact specifics whether the individual was heading to the Chico High school campus or the Chico state campus,” said O’Brien. “He was walking in the direction of both so we didn’t know exactly what the caller was articulating. I don’t think that they were specific and probably intentionally.”
As a result of inconsistencies into their investigations turned up both departments determined that there was no clear threat.
“Nothing really was making much sense, and once we started to verify different levels of the phone call, not being able to identify who that person was, their inability to reconnect, those kind of things, it became very clear that this was some type of hoax,” O’Brien said. “We don’t know the purpose behind the hoax, obviously, the intent behind it, that is still unknown.”
Chief O’Brien said the caller has not been identified to date.
By John Domogma
