Police respond to calls of active shooter at Hurricane High School, declare caller gave ‘false information’
HURRICANE, Utah (ABC4) — Hurricane City Police confirmed they were on the scene at Hurricane High School after there were reports of shots being fired just after 1 p.m. on Monday afternoon.
Police also said there were reports of subjects barricaded in the building, even though school was not in session as the calls came in during spring break. Police said they did not find evidence of anyone in the school or shots being fired.
“This appears to have been what we refer to as a swatting incident, with false information,” a sergeant with HCPD said in a video update.
“Officers from HCPD and every neighboring agency within the county responded to assist,” Hurricane Police said in a statement on social media.
In the statement on social media, police said there were initial reports through a non-emergency call reporting that people were locked in the library and auditorium.
“As of this time Officers have cleared those areas and not located anyone or any signs of gunshots being fired inside the school,” police said.
Police said every agency in Washington County was responding to the reported incident, and officers arrived within just a few minutes after the non-emergency calls came in.
“All the while that our officers were inside the school, they’d never heard any gunshots. They never saw anything to support that gunshots were ever fired from inside the school,” the sergeant said.
The sergeant said officers encountered 29 people while searching the school, 23 of which were students, with the rest being teachers and other school staff. Parents were notified and everyone was evacuated safely, police said.
A SWAT team conducted a secondary search to ensure no one else was in the school after students were evacuated.
“There is no reason for us to believe that there is a danger to the public at this time,” the sergeant said. “We are currently investigating the phone calls that were made to our dispatch center to look into potentially pursuing the persons that made those phone calls for criminal charges.”
Anyone with information has been asked to reach out to the Hurricane City Police Department.
“There was no shooting at the school today,” the sergeant said.
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