Campus Alert Archive
Yale

'This is NOT a test': The 6-Hour Yale Lockdown Triggered by a Pay-Phone Hoax on the Day Sandy Hook's Report Dropped

CTswattingemergency notificationmedium confidence
Confirmed HoaxDetermined to be a hoax. The institutional response is documented because it reveals how the alert system performed under a perceived real threat.

On Monday morning, November 25, 2013 — the same day Connecticut released the official report on the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting — an anonymous male called 911 from a pay phone on Columbus Avenue in New Haven and claimed that his roommate was on his way to Yale University with a gun. Yale issued a shelter-in-place alert at 10:17 AM EST — 29 minutes after the 911 call — and locked down its Old Campus for the next six hours while SWAT teams from Yale Police, New Haven Police, the Connecticut State Police, the FBI, and the ATF conducted a room-by-room search of the historic quad. No gunman was found.

Alerts
4
Response
29 min
Killed
0
Injured
0
Institution
Yale University
Private R1 · CT
~13,400 studentsYale Alert
Confirmed Timeline

Alert Sequence

4 messages in sequence · 2 verified verbatim

Some alert texts below are approximate reconstructions from news coverage, not confirmed verbatim transcripts. Reconstructed texts are shown in italic with a dashed border. Verified verbatim texts have a solid border and are marked accordingly.

INITIAL ALERTSMS
Verified verbatimFox News coverage citing the verbatim 10:17 AM EST Yale Alert sent on November 25, 201395 chars
Confirmed report of person with a gun on/near Old Campus. SHELTER IN PLACE. This is NOT a test.
Sent 29 minutes after the 9:48 AM EST 911 call from the Columbus Avenue pay phone — a notably fast turnaround for a New Haven-Yale-FBI-coordinated alert
The word 'Confirmed' was technically accurate in the police sense (the call had been received and was being treated as credible) but became a key point of post-incident criticism — the gunman had not been seen by anyone on campus
'This is NOT a test' appears to be a Yale-specific phrasing designed to override the muscle memory of regular Yale Alert tests, which had become routine by 2013
'Old Campus' refers to the original 18th-century quad housing first-year undergraduates — the 'hot zone' for the multi-agency search
UPDATEEmail
Verified verbatimCNN coverage quoting the more detailed Yale Alert email follow-up message488 chars
New Haven Police have received an anonymous call from a phone booth in the 300 block of Columbus Avenue (between Howard Avenue and Hallock Street) reporting a person on the Yale Campus with a gun. There have been NOT confirmations or sightings of this person. Yale and New Haven police are in the area. If you have information, please call 911 immediately. Yale Police advises those on campus to remain in their current location and shelter in place until there is additional information.
The typo 'There have been NOT confirmations' is preserved verbatim — likely a rushed substitution of 'NOT' for 'no' under pressure
Names the precise location of the pay phone (300 block of Columbus Avenue between Howard and Hallock) — unusual specificity for a campus alert and indicates how much information had been triaged in the first 90 minutes
Walks back the 'Confirmed' framing of the first SMS by stating explicitly: 'no confirmations or sightings of this person'
UPDATESMS
Approximate reconstruction157 chars
Yale Alert: SWAT teams continuing search of Old Campus and surrounding buildings. Shelter in place remains in effect. No new sightings. Updates as available.

This text has been reconstructed from news coverage and may not reflect the exact original wording.

By 1:30 PM EST, SWAT teams had been conducting room-by-room searches for nearly three hours with no signs of a gunman — a sustained 'all eyes' posture rare in U.S. campus emergencies
Yale Police were assisted by New Haven Police, Connecticut State Police, the FBI, the ATF, and West Haven SWAT — among the largest law-enforcement responses to a hoax campus alert at the time
The phrase 'No new sightings' implicitly acknowledged that there had never been any sightings, only the 9:48 AM 911 call
ALL CLEARSMS+6h 13m
Approximate reconstructionReconstructed from ABC News and NBC News coverage of the 4:30 PM EST lift of the shelter-in-place order218 chars
Yale Alert: Shelter in place has been LIFTED. Police searches of Old Campus and surrounding buildings have found no evidence of a gunman. Normal operations may resume. Yale Police thanks the community for its patience.

This text has been reconstructed from news coverage and may not reflect the exact original wording.

Issued approximately 6 hours and 13 minutes after the first alert — one of the longest documented Yale shelter-in-place orders to date
The phrase 'No evidence of a gunman' was a deliberate choice over 'no gunman' — police had not yet formally declared the call a hoax
Subsequent investigation traced the call to a Columbus Avenue pay phone; Jeffrey Jones of Westbrook was later charged with multiple offenses including falsely reporting an incident
Context

Background

The November 25, 2013, Yale shelter-in-place hoax is widely cited as one of the earliest sophisticated 'swatting' attacks against a major U.S. university — and it occurred on a day already saturated with gun-violence news, as Connecticut authorities released their official report on the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting the same morning. At 9:48 AM EST, an anonymous male called 911 from a pay phone at the 300 block of Columbus Avenue in New Haven, about a mile from the Yale campus. He told dispatchers his roommate was 'on his way to the Yale campus to shoot people.' New Haven Police relayed the call to Yale Police, who issued a Yale Alert at 10:17 AM EST using the phrase 'Confirmed report' — language that proved controversial as the day wore on without any actual sighting. For the next six hours, a multi-agency response that included Yale Police, New Haven Police, Connecticut State Police, the FBI, the ATF, and West Haven SWAT conducted room-by-room searches of Old Campus — Yale's historic first-year quad — and surrounding buildings. The shelter-in-place was lifted at approximately 4:30 PM EST, with no gunman found and no evidence of any actual threat. Police traced the 911 call to the Columbus Avenue pay phone; a year later, Jeffrey Jones, 50, of Westbrook was charged with falsely reporting an incident, threatening, reckless endangerment, misuse of the 911 system, and breach of peace. The case prefigured the school-swatting wave that would later target dozens of U.S. universities in 2022-2026 — and became a template for understanding how false reports made via untraceable pay phones could trigger multi-hour campus lockdowns and full SWAT mobilizations.
Analysis

Key Findings

Yale's 29-minute response time from 911 call to first alert was fast by 2013 standards but seeded a controversy: the word 'Confirmed' in the first SMS overstated what police actually knew at the time
The 6-hour-plus shelter-in-place order — covering thousands of undergraduates trapped in Old Campus dormitories — was one of the longest documented Yale lockdowns and required a multi-agency response involving five different law-enforcement agencies
The incident is one of the earliest well-documented 'swatting' attacks against a U.S. university, prefiguring the much larger swatting wave that would target dozens of campuses 2022-2026
The hoax fell on the same day Connecticut released the official Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting report — a coincidence that shaped both the institutional response and the public reaction
Outcome
The lockdown was lifted at approximately 4:30 PM EST after a multi-agency search yielded no gunman and no evidence of any threat. Police traced the 911 call to a pay phone at 300 Columbus Avenue. Approximately a year later, Connecticut authorities charged Jeffrey Jones, 50, of Westbrook, with falsely reporting an incident, threatening, reckless endangerment, misuse of the 911 system, and breach of peace. The case is widely cited as one of the earliest documented 'swatting' hoaxes targeting a major U.S. university.
Provenance

Sources

  1. News
    Lockdown lifted at Yale hours after initial 911 call (CNN)
    cnn.com
  2. News
    Yale issues shelter-in-place alert while authorities investigate report of person with gun (Fox News)
    foxnews.com
  3. News
    Yale Lockdown Caused By Hoax, Police Say (ABC News)
    abcnews.go.com
  4. News
    Connecticut man charged in Yale hoax threat (CBS News)
    cbsnews.com
  5. News
    Lockdown lifted at Yale campus after shooting threat (NBC News)
    nbcnews.com
  6. News
    Gunman Sighting Now Likely 'Innocent Mistake' (New Haven Independent)
    newhavenindependent.org
  7. News
    Arrest Made in Yale Hoax Shooting Report (NBC Connecticut)
    nbcconnecticut.com
Tags
swattinghoaxshelter-in-placeold-campuspay-phone-callmulti-agency-responsesandy-hook-context2013Hoax
Added May 2026Updated May 2026Via ingestion