Around 9:50 a.m. a call lasting a few seconds came into 911 from a pay phone off campus saying matter of factly that the caller’s roommate “was heading toward campus with a gun” to shoot people, said Officer David Hartman, a spokesman for the New Haven police. Half an hour later, the university broadcast an alert via text message, on Twitter and through blue security phones stationed around the campus and inside buildings. One Twitter post around 10:45 a.m. read: “Unconfirmed report of a person on campus w/ a gun. Please stay indoors.” Twenty-one minutes later the report was listed as confirmed.
“This is NOT a test,” Yale’s emergency management website said.
The campus, all but empty at the start of Thanksgiving break, was locked down, streets were immobilized, and local business was brought to a halt over the course of the day. Representatives of campus, city and state police departments, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, federal homeland security, Connecticut homeland security, as well as the F.B.I. and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives coordinated their efforts during a search of Yale’s Old Campus, where many freshmen live. Students still on hand watched through their windows as police officers, some in camouflage and helmets, spread out with their weapons.
Several people reported seeing a man with a gun, Officer Hartman said. “There is a fairly well-confirmed report of somebody on campus with a long gun,” he said a couple of hours after the search began. The police also were checking surveillance videos from the area.
But later, Officer Hartman said that the police had determined that at least some of the people who reported those sightings had actually seen a member of law enforcement, and that another person had seen only a backpack. The police did not release a description of the gunman, and noted that the witnesses’ descriptions of him did not all match.
By 2 p.m. Officer Hartman reported that the police had no suspect and “nothing tangible.” And at 4:50, the shelter-in-place order was lifted. Dean M. Esserman, chief of New Haven’s Police Department, said that a room-to-room search would continue and the security perimeter would nonetheless remain in place “out of an abundance of caution.”
Rob O’Gara, a sophomore who was on campus, said he locked himself in his room when he received the alert. He said he could see officers around High and Elm Streets “yelling to each other to take cover.” They shouted at someone, “Get your hands out of your pockets,” he said, and also yelled something about his backpack. Another student, JohnCarlo Giambrone, a freshman, said he saw officers shouting at a man in a hoodie on Elm Street to turn around.
Jade Shao, a junior who locked herself in her room, said she could see through a window some police officers in helmets and body armor, and one hiding behind a wall with his weapon. “I’m not sure what kind of gun it is, but it’s a big one,” she said.
The dean of Pierson College, one of Yale’s residential colleges, sent an email to students warning, “Please do not open doors to anyone, even to people identifying themselves as police. Lock your suite doors and do not open them until further notification.”
“Be patient, and be calm,” it continued. “Everything is going to be okay.”
Remick Kawawaki, a freshman whose family was visiting for the holiday, was holed up with his sister and 10 others in a friend’s dorm room. They passed the hours watching news reports on television and playing video games. “We’re concerned, definitely,” he said during the hours of highest alert. “But I think for the most part none of us is really freaking out right now. We’re making sure everyone stays calm.”
The original Yale alert went out to the campus about 30 minutes after the 911 call. Tom Conroy, a university spokesman, said that “there has to be some time between the 911 call going out and Yale having the information with their police and getting out the alert.”
Chief Esserman said officials were searching for the person who placed the 911 call and promised to “put handcuffs on that person.”
Yahoo Local News – New York Times
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