SALT LAKE CITY — Starting at 9:17 a.m. on March 29, Cache County officials received the first of what would be multiple hoax calls across the state reporting an active shooter at a school.
"The caller was an adult male with a thick accent claiming to be in a school bathroom who said the shooter was a student with a weapon. They used heavy breathing, pretended to be panting to try and make it sound like the incident was real and they were panicked. Whenever the dispatchers or whoever was on the other end of the call would try and elicit more information or ask harder questions the caller would disconnect," Broadhead said.
"So he immediately slipped into that. He was able to determine it was a hoax within minutes, if not seconds, because he knew those bathrooms that the caller was claiming the shooting was happening in," he said. "So even when they sort of rocked the moment, they were very honest with what they needed to do to improve," he said.
Broadhead said hoax threats have numerous negative impacts such as mental health and trauma to students, community and responders.