More than a dozen schools from South Portland to Bangor went on lockdown Tuesday morning following a wave of hoax calls about school shooting threats that started in Bangor and Oxford Hills.
Calls were confirmed in at least 11 communities, including Oxford Hills, Bangor, Lewiston, Portland, South Portland, Scarborough, Sanford, Gorham, Windham, North Berwick and Brunswick.
Shannon Moss, spokesperson for the Maine Department of Public Safety, wouldn’t specify which schools received the hoax calls, but said “more than a dozen” had been reported.
Moss said state police were able to confirm all of the calls were false reports designed to elicit an emergency response.
“There is presently no known threat to the students, staff or public at this time,” she said. “The Department of Public Safety encourages law enforcement and school leadership to continue to use due diligence when reviewing any new potential threats.”
The threats are believed to be incidents of “swatting,” which is when someone makes a false report of a threat to get police to respond to a specific location. Similar calls were made Tuesday in several other states, Maine officials said.
The threats were called in to at least five schools that doubled as polling locations and caused confusion throughout the state as SWAT teams and armored cars were dispatched. However, state election officials say the only location where voting was affected was in South Portland, where voting was temporarily paused while police locked down the building.
“We’re incredibly proud of how swiftly clerks and law enforcement worked together to identify the swatting incidents as a hoax and to move forward with ensuring that voting continued,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said Tuesday afternoon.
By early afternoon, the lockdowns had been lifted and students resumed normal activities or were released early. Some were already learning remotely and were not disrupted.
SCHOOLS LOCK DOWN
The Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in Paris was among the first to receive one of the calls, school officials and Maine State Police said.
Just after 10 a.m., the district was notified of an online threat and the building was placed in an immediate lockdown. Paris Chief of Police Michael Ward said initial reports described a man with a weapon outside the high school who was about to enter the building.
The swatting calls at multiple schools across the state all came from the same IP address, an address that has been used to make similar threatening calls from a foreign country, Superintendent Heather Manchester said. In each phone threat, the caller used the same narrative.
After the threat was received at Oxford Hills, police were stationed at every door at the high school and all vehicle entrances were locked as fire and rescue responders were asked to stage behind the Department of Health and Human Services building on nearby Alpine Street.
In Bangor, police received a call from a national hotline just before 10 a.m. saying that a person armed with a rifle was about to enter Bangor High School, city police confirmed Tuesday afternoon.
“As officers converged on the scene, more information was gathered that similar threats had been called in to other locations in Maine, as well as other parts of the country,” Bangor police spokesperson Sgt. Jason McAmbley said in a statement. “The school responded appropriately, and officers on scene were able to quickly confirm there was no threat to the safety of those in the school.”
TEMPORARY VOTING DISRUPTIONS
Five of the schools that received threats also served as polling locations.
In South Portland, the hoax temporarily halted voting. The South Portland Community Center, the polling place for about 9,000 city residents, was locked down by police for about 15 minutes Tuesday morning after a threat was made against South Portland High School, which is across the street.
While police were at the high school searching cars and buildings, no officers were seen at the community center, although nearby Highland Avenue was briefly closed. Mayor Misha Pride, who was greeting voters at the community center, said there was “some frustration” from people who could not leave, but people were generally calm.
“Voting was temporarily but only minimally impacted while no one was permitted to enter the building,” South Portland police said in a statement issued at 2 p.m.
“Because a line for voting had already formed inside, people continued to vote during the lockdown,” police said, adding that voting was only paused for about 10 minutes and resumed as normal once the lockdown was lifted, and will continue until 8 p.m.
South Portland High School Principal Sarah Glenn emailed families afterward to say students would be sent home early.
“The building is safe, but we recognize the desire to have students released early,” she wrote.
A Portland Police Department spokesperson said a similar call was made about Deering High School, which also serves as a polling location. Officers arrived quickly and cleared the location, Portland police said, adding that they believe the ‘swatting’ calls also happened in Connecticut and Vermont.
Portland High School – adjacent to City Hall and Merrill Auditorium where many residents were voting – also went into lockdown around 11:00 a.m. after “PHS received a threatening phone call this morning that follows a pattern of swatting calls today to schools across the state,” the district wrote in an announcement at 11:25 a.m.
Superintendent Ryan Scallon said the state Department of Education alerted the district about swatting threats early, and the school went into a 15-minute precautionary lockdown.
Threats were reported at the high school in Lewiston, which prompted other schools in the district to go into lockdown, including Governor Longley Elementary, which serves as a polling location. The district resumed classes later in the morning, Superintendent Jake Langlais said.
Brunswick police confirmed a call was made to the high school at 12:29 p.m. and officers responded immediately, without lights and sirens. Police chief Scott Stewart said that the FBI is investigating the incident because the call was made from a foreign number.
At Gorham High School, students were not in class when a hoax call came in around 10:30 a.m., though teachers were on campus for a workshop, Superintendent Heather Perry said.
Noble High School in North Berwick received a threat and after lifting a lock down, dismissed classes just before noon.
The Scarborough Police Department confirmed another call was made at Scarborough High School and said officers were staged at all schools in the district, but voting was not impacted.
This story was updated on Nov. 7 to include a call made at Brunswick High School.
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.