{
  "id": "2013-11-25-yale-university-shelter-in-place-hoax",
  "slug": "yale-university-shelter-in-place-hoax-2013-11-25",
  "institution": {
    "name": "Yale University",
    "shortName": "Yale",
    "state": "CT",
    "type": "private-r1",
    "alertSystemName": "Yale Alert",
    "enrollment": 13400
  },
  "incident": {
    "date": "2013-11-25",
    "type": "swatting",
    "cleryCategory": "emergency-notification",
    "headline": "Phoned report of a gunman prompts six-hour shelter-in-place; determined to be a hoax",
    "headlinePublic": "Phoned report of a gunman prompts six-hour shelter-in-place; determined to be a hoax",
    "summary": "On Monday morning, November 25, 2013 (the same day Connecticut released the official [report on the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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](https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/25/justice/yale-gun-report/index.html) with a gun. Yale issued a shelter-in-place alert at [10:17 AM EST](https://www.foxnews.com/us/yale-issues-shelter-in-place-alert-while-authorities-investigate-report-of-person-with-gun) (29 minutes after the 911 call) and locked down its [Old Campus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.",
    "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. About five months later, in April 2014, 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.",
    "casualties": {
      "killed": 0,
      "injured": 0
    },
    "resolution": "confirmed-hoax"
  },
  "alerts": [
    {
      "sequence": 1,
      "type": "initial",
      "timestamp": "2013-11-25T10:17:00-05:00",
      "channel": "sms",
      "verbatimText": "",
      "isVerbatimConfirmed": false,
      "sourceUrl": "https://www.foxnews.com/us/yale-issues-shelter-in-place-alert-while-authorities-investigate-report-of-person-with-gun",
      "sourceDescription": "Fox News coverage citing the verbatim 10:17 AM EST Yale Alert sent on November 25, 2013",
      "annotations": []
    },
    {
      "sequence": 2,
      "type": "update",
      "timestampApprox": "Late morning, approximately 11:30 AM EST on November 25, 2013",
      "channel": "email",
      "verbatimText": "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.",
      "isVerbatimConfirmed": true,
      "sourceUrl": "https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/25/justice/yale-gun-report/index.html",
      "sourceDescription": "CNN coverage quoting the more detailed Yale Alert email follow-up message",
      "annotations": [
        "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'"
      ],
      "characterCount": 488
    },
    {
      "sequence": 3,
      "type": "update",
      "timestampApprox": "Early afternoon, approximately 1:45 PM EST on November 25, 2013",
      "channel": "sms",
      "verbatimText": "When (police) knock on your door, a Yale Police Officer will slip their Yale ID under the door. Please cooperate. In some cases, Police may use keys, but they will identify themselves. Shelter in Place continues.",
      "isVerbatimConfirmed": true,
      "sourceUrl": "https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lockdown-lifted-yale-campus-after-shooting-threat-flna2d11651824",
      "sourceDescription": "NBC News, quoting the verbatim Yale Alert sent at 1:45 PM EST on November 25, 2013; corroborated by Yale Daily News coverage",
      "annotations": [
        "Recovered verbatim from NBC News, which quoted the 1:45 PM EST Yale Alert word-for-word; the Yale Daily News independently described the same message (police identifying themselves by slipping a Yale ID under the door), confirming the wording",
        "The '(police)' parenthetical is reproduced exactly as NBC News rendered it; the message instructed sheltering students how to verify that officers entering their rooms were legitimate Yale Police during the room-by-room SWAT search",
        "By 1:45 PM EST, SWAT teams had been conducting room-by-room searches of Old Campus and the residential colleges for several hours with no signs of a gunman, a sustained posture rare in U.S. campus emergencies"
      ],
      "characterCount": 212
    },
    {
      "sequence": 4,
      "type": "all-clear",
      "timestamp": "2013-11-25T16:30:00-05:00",
      "channel": "sms",
      "verbatimText": "",
      "isVerbatimConfirmed": false,
      "sourceUrl": "https://abcnews.go.com/US/yale-lockdown-caused-hoax-police/story?id=21004945",
      "sourceDescription": "Reconstructed from ABC News and NBC News coverage of the 4:30 PM EST lift of the shelter-in-place order",
      "annotations": []
    }
  ],
  "context": "The [November 25, 2013, Yale shelter-in-place hoax](https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/25/justice/yale-gun-report/index.html) 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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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](https://www.foxnews.com/us/yale-issues-shelter-in-place-alert-while-authorities-investigate-report-of-person-with-gun) using the phrase 'Confirmed report', although no one on campus ever sighted a gunman. 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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Campus) (Yale's historic first-year quad) and surrounding buildings. The shelter-in-place was [lifted at approximately 4:30 PM EST](https://abcnews.go.com/US/yale-lockdown-caused-hoax-police/story?id=21004945), with no gunman found and no evidence of any actual threat. Police traced the 911 call to the Columbus Avenue pay phone; about five months later, in April 2014, [Jeffrey Jones, 50, of Westbrook](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/connecticut-man-charged-in-yale-hoax-threat/) 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](https://time.com/7312487/active-shooter-false-reports-school-swatting/) 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.",
  "keyFindings": [
    "Yale sent its first alert 29 minutes after the 911 call; the first SMS described the report as a 'Confirmed report of person with a gun,' although no gunman had been seen on campus",
    "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"
  ],
  "responseTimeMinutes": 29,
  "sources": [
    {
      "title": "Lockdown lifted at Yale hours after initial 911 call (CNN)",
      "url": "https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/25/justice/yale-gun-report/index.html",
      "type": "local-media"
    },
    {
      "title": "Yale issues shelter-in-place alert while authorities investigate report of person with gun (Fox News)",
      "url": "https://www.foxnews.com/us/yale-issues-shelter-in-place-alert-while-authorities-investigate-report-of-person-with-gun",
      "type": "local-media"
    },
    {
      "title": "Yale Lockdown Caused By Hoax, Police Say (ABC News)",
      "url": "https://abcnews.go.com/US/yale-lockdown-caused-hoax-police/story?id=21004945",
      "type": "local-media"
    },
    {
      "title": "Connecticut man charged in Yale hoax threat (CBS News)",
      "url": "https://www.cbsnews.com/news/connecticut-man-charged-in-yale-hoax-threat/",
      "type": "local-media"
    },
    {
      "title": "Lockdown lifted at Yale campus after shooting threat (NBC News)",
      "url": "https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lockdown-lifted-yale-campus-after-shooting-threat-flna2d11651824",
      "type": "local-media"
    },
    {
      "title": "Gunman Sighting Now Likely 'Innocent Mistake' (New Haven Independent)",
      "url": "https://www.newhavenindependent.org/2013/11/25/gunman_report_puts_medical_area_on_alert/",
      "type": "local-media"
    },
    {
      "title": "Arrest Made in Yale Hoax Shooting Report (NBC Connecticut)",
      "url": "https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/Arrest-Made-in-Yale-Hoax-Shooting-Report-256365631.html",
      "type": "local-media"
    }
  ],
  "confidence": "medium",
  "tags": [
    "swatting",
    "hoax",
    "shelter-in-place",
    "old-campus",
    "pay-phone-call",
    "multi-agency-response",
    "sandy-hook-context",
    "2013"
  ],
  "dateAdded": "2026-05-13",
  "lastUpdated": "2026-07-20",
  "addedBy": "ingestion"
}