GBI, FBI Atlanta investigating wave of hoax calls

“The GBI is aware of these incidents and the nationwide trend by online threat actors to disrupt schools with these swatting incidents,” agency spokesperson Lydia Bullard told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Around 11:30 a.m., a spokesperson with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta said their Hughes Spalding hospital in downtown Atlanta received a bomb threat. The situation led to Georgia State University staff and students receiving a notification, but a school official confirmed there was no threat to campus.

Atlanta police responded to the area, and the scene was cleared shortly after 1 p.m. Law enforcement said nothing hazardous was located.

Around the same time, students at Mercer University in Macon were ordered to shelter in place around noon after Bibb County’s 911 center received a threatening call. The nature of the threat was not divulged, but a school spokesperson said a threat was not found by law enforcement who swept the campus.

Credit: Joe Kovac

Credit: Joe Kovac

About an hour and a half later, messages sent by school officials to students confirmed the campus was clear. In a statement, school officials said, “There is no active threat on the Macon campus. Police are continuing to monitor the situation.”

The threats on Wednesday came a day after Central Georgia Technical College went on lockdown after a 911 call about an active shooter at the college’s Macon campus, school officials said.

At around 1:35 p.m. Tuesday, an emergency notification was sent to staff and students at the Macon campus as authorities continued to assess the validity of the threat. At 2:25 p.m., an all-clear was given.

“After initial assessments indicated the situation was a hoax, law enforcement officials continued their sweep of the entire campus and all buildings to ensure student, staff, and faculty safety,” the school said in a press release.

The Richard B. Russell Federal Building in downtown Atlanta was also the target of a hoax last week after a package was located. The material inside the package was a crushed-up, over-the-counter pill, Bart Stevens, chief deputy with the U.S. Marshals Service, told the AJC.

Stevens said the sender “is a known, frequent, threatening package sender.”

The wave of swatting calls in other parts of the country began in Pennsylvania and Tennessee, The Associated Press reported.

At Villanova University, which is about 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia, students were attending Orientation Mass on Aug. 21 when law enforcement received multiple calls about a man opening fire on campus, according to AP.

Hours earlier, Tennessee authorities received similar false calls reporting an active shooter at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and four people shot.

Since then, the AP has reported that hoax calls have also impacted the University of South Carolina, the University of Arkansas, Northern Arizona University, Iowa State University, Kansas State University, the University of Colorado-Boulder, the University of New Hampshire, the University of Kentucky and West Virginia University.

FBI Atlanta confirmed the rise in threats.

“The FBI is seeing an increase in swatting events across the country, and we take potential hoax threats very seriously because it puts innocent people at risk,” the agency said. “Knowingly providing false information to emergency service agencies about a possible threat to life drains law enforcement resources, costs thousands of dollars, and, most importantly, puts innocent people at risk.”

— Staff writer Joe Kovac Jr. contributed to this article.