Ottawa Hills Local Schools district was locked down Friday morning after a hoax call was made by a man who claimed he was going to carry out a mass shooting and bombing, officials said.
"There was an allegation of an active shooter, and a person being shot. That is not the case," said John Wenzlick, the Ottawa Hills police chief. "This was a hoax call. There have been a lot of these occurring throughout the state of Ohio, and unfortunately it looks like we were the victim of one of them."
The call about an active shooter at the junior/senior high school came in about 7:50 a.m. Both that school and the nearby elementary school were quickly locked down.
The caller dialed the nonemergency dispatch line to report he was about to carry out a shooting with an AR-15 at Ottawa Hills High School, and said he also had pipe bombs, according to a recording of the eight-minute call. The man had an accent and mispronounced "Ottawa."
He said he wanted to "take revenge on a teacher" named Mark who had given him bad grades.
The dispatcher sounded skeptical but kept probing for details as the man stated he was driving to the school. At two points in the call there are sounds similar to gunshots in the background and the man, who identifies himself as "James Thompson," suggests to the dispatcher that he has shot someone. The call ends with more gunfire and someone yelling, "stop!" in the background.
It all turned out to be an elaborate hoax call, also known as "swatting."
About 45 minutes after the call, students from the senior high left lockdown and evacuated to the football field, and then to the elementary school's gymnasium, as police from multiple agencies searched inside.
By midmorning, parents of high school and junior high students were picking up their children in an emotional scene outside the elementary gym. They formed a line and were showing identification before meeting their kids. Many had been texting with their children throughout the morning.
"This is the worst nightmare you can get in your whole life. I'm shaking," said Dr. Mohammad El Sayyad, who had been communicating with his son, a high schooler. "I just want him home."
Classes at both schools were canceled for the remainder of the day. Students at the junior/senior high school were set to return later to fetch their bags and coats, which they had left behind during the evacuation. Meanwhile, teachers and administrators were set to review their response.
"It's frustrating," Adam Fineske, the district's superintendent, said of the hoax. "We are working so hard at school coming out of the pandemic, to get our kids back in the classroom, to get them caught up on things that they were behind on. We want to focus on academics, we want to focus on teaching kids, helping kids, and helping them enjoy their education experience.
"When things like this happen, it throws everything for us. It's very frustrating, to say the least," he said. "But unfortunately it's a little bit of the world we're living in. We're very prepared for it."
Mr. Fineske said the call came in just as students were arriving for the day, and as he was greeting elementary students outside. He praised the rapid police response by multiple agencies, as well as how teachers calmly handled the situation.
Police conducted a "couple sweeps" of the junior/senior high just to be safe, Chief Wenzlick said, and also searched bags and lockers. The initial plan called for TARTA buses to take students to their parents at another nearby school, but officials decided to release them directly from the elementary gym.
Mr. Fineske said messages from school counselors would be sent to parents Friday giving them guidance on how to discuss the incident with their children over the long weekend. And he said on Tuesday the counselors planned to hold classroom discussions.
Dozens of hoax active shooter calls have caused police to respond to schools around Ohio and elsewhere in recent months. In November, police responded to Start High School on a report of an active shooter that turned out to be fake — one of multiple around Ohio that same day — and another hoax shooter call occurred at Scott High School in September.
Those calls were all made by what sounded like the same person with a heavy accent, who followed a similar script about multiple students shot by an active gunman.
Later Friday afternoon, Chief Wenzlick told The Blade there was not yet any confirmation of a connection between the Ottawa Hills caller and the others, "but we are certainly investigating possible connections with those. We are working with state and federal authorities now to investigate."
The man who called about shooting up Ottawa Hills sounded different than many of the other previous hoax callers. He continued giving the dispatcher pieces of information about his location, but was never specific, saying he was near the gym, then was in a bathroom, then was going upstairs to shoot up a classroom.
At one point the man asked: "Are you sending any help?"
"Well, yeah, why wouldn't I be sending help?" the dispatcher responded. "You're claiming that you're shooting up a high school, and you're going to bomb it."
First Published January 13, 2023, 1:34 p.m.
