Campus Alert Archive
CCSU

A Ninja Costume and a Katana Locked Down CCSU for Three Hours

CTarmed personemergency notificationmedium confidence
UnfoundedNo evidence of an actual threat was found. The institutional response is documented because the alert communication is identical to what would occur during a real incident.

Around noon on November 4, 2013, 911 callers reported a suspicious, seemingly armed person on the Central Connecticut State University campus in New Britain, triggering a roughly three-hour lockdown. A witness described a man in camouflage pants, knee pads, a body-armor vest, and a paintball mask with a katana strapped to his back. The 'armed person' turned out to be 21-year-old senior David Kyem in a Halloween ninja costume; no shots were fired and no firearm was recovered.

Alerts
3
Response
—
Killed
0
Injured
0
Institution
Central Connecticut State University
Public Masters · CT
~11,000 studentsCCSU Alert
Confirmed Timeline

Alert Sequence

3 messages in sequence · 3 verified verbatim

INITIAL ALERTTwitter/X
Verified verbatimCBS New York, quoting the official CCSU Twitter (X) emergency message123 chars
Campus emergency. Seek shelter. Lock doors, close windows. We will communicate when we have more info. This is not a drill.
Posted on the official CCSU Twitter (X) account as the initial emergency notification after ~noon 911 calls described a man who 'appeared to be armed' with a sword and possible handgun
'This is not a drill' was appended to override the routine-test reflex — the same phrasing pattern seen in the contemporaneous Yale shelter-in-place alert nine months earlier
Terse, action-first construction ('Seek shelter. Lock doors, close windows.') with an explicit promise of follow-up ('We will communicate when we have more info')
UPDATETwitter/X
Verified verbatimOfficial Central Connecticut State University Twitter (X) post during the November 4, 2013 lockdown72 chars
#CCSU police is on the scene. Please stay indoors and away from windows.
Posted from the verified CCSU X account during the active search of campus
Reiterates the 'stay indoors and away from windows' shelter posture while confirming police presence on scene
Hashtag-prefixed ('#CCSU') for discoverability — reflects the 2013-era practice of routing campus emergency updates through public Twitter rather than a closed SMS-only channel
ALL CLEARTwitter/X
Verified verbatimCT Mirror, quoting the official CCSU Twitter (X) all-clear message128 chars
The sounds that you just heard was campus police indicating that the campus is ALL CLEAR #ccsu. You may now leave the buildings.
The verbatim all-clear posted to the official CCSU Twitter (X) account after the roughly three-hour lockdown ended with three people taken into custody and no weapon recovered.
References an audible campus-police siren signal ('The sounds that you just heard') rather than relying solely on the text channel — a layered notification used because the lockdown ran across a public, outdoor campus.
This is a true all-clear: it explicitly lifts the shelter order ('You may now leave the buildings'), distinguishing it from the shelter directives in the earlier alerts.
Context

Background

Around noon on November 4, 2013, 911 callers reported a seemingly armed, suspicious person at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, prompting a roughly three-hour campus lockdown. A witness described a man in camouflage pants, knee pads, a body-armor vest, and a paintball mask with a katana strapped to his back. Police identified him as 21-year-old senior David Kyem, son of a CCSU professor; his father told WFSB the son had attended a multi-day party at UConn and returned to campus still in his Halloween ninja costume. CCSU issued a campus alert telling people to seek shelter, and two nearby New Britain schools locked down as a precaution. No shots were fired and no firearm was recovered; Kyem was charged with breach of peace. The case is an early, vivid example of the 'costume-as-weapon-report' pattern that recurs across the archive, and it shows how a regional Connecticut public's emergency-notification system handled a sustained, ultimately unfounded armed-person scare without injury.
Analysis

Key Findings

A report of a seemingly armed person around noon on November 4, 2013 put CCSU in a roughly three-hour lockdown
The 'armed person' was a 21-year-old student wearing a Halloween ninja costume with a katana, body armor, and a paintball mask
No shots were fired and no firearm was recovered; the student was charged with breach of peace
Two nearby New Britain schools also locked down as a precaution, showing how a campus scare can ripple into surrounding K-12 districts
Outcome
Police found no real threat: no shots were fired and no firearm was recovered. David Kyem, 21, son of a CCSU professor, was arrested and charged with breach of peace. Two nearby New Britain schools were also briefly locked down as a precaution.
Provenance

Sources

  1. News
    CCSU Lockdown: Professor's son arrested, charged with breach of peace - CBS News
    cbsnews.com
  2. News
    Student Charged In CCSU Gun Scare That Prompted Lockdown - CBS New York
    cbsnews.com
  3. News
    CCSU Issued Campus Alert to Seek Shelter / CCSU Suspect Arrested a Second Time - NBC Connecticut
    nbcconnecticut.com
  4. News
    CCSU campus lockdown ends with 3 in custody - The Connecticut Mirror
    ctmirror.org
Tags
armed-personlockdownconnecticutnew-britainhalloweencostumefalse-alarmemergency-notificationUnfounded
Added May 2026Updated May 2026Via ingestion