Collin College Plano Campus, Texas Wesleyan University among several schools to get hoax mass shooting call
Two North Texas schools were among those targeted with false threats across the state on Thursday morning.
Plano police evacuated Collin College's Plano Campus just before 10 a.m.
A 911 call came in at 9:45 a.m. claiming that there was an active shooter on campus.
"We arrived on scene and our first objective is to neutralize any threat there may be," said Plano Police officer Andrae Smith.
"We took this seriously. We practice for incidents like this and this is a large facility, as you know, so even though we determined fairly quickly that it was a false alert we treated it as if it were real," said Collin College Senior Vice President Steve Matthews.
Plano police, DPS troopers and federal officers swarmed the campus, while quickly determining the call was a hoax.
"At one time there were more than 100 officers here just from the Plano alone in addition to our own Collin police force," said Matthews.
Students in the Plano campus buildings sheltered in place until the all-clear was given.
"We continued to search throughout the building, and we did not release the building until that last classroom and last student was located and confirmed to be OK," said Smith
A text sent to students said that the classes and normal operations would continue at 1 p.m.
Plano police say that they are working to locate the caller and make a determination on any possible criminal charges. Plano Police Public Information Officer Andrae Smith said the call is "disrespectful" to people who have been through a mass shooting and also issued a warning to other possible hoax callers.
"We ask that any individuals that have the thought of doing this tomorrow, next week, next year to think two times before you do it because you are disrupting the lives, the commerce, the education, calls for service, quality of life, everything when you are trying to make yourself laugh," he said.
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In Fort Worth, Texas Wesleyan University received a similar false threat about an active shooter just after 9 a.m.
Students were sent a text alert to shelter in place.
Fort Worth PD assisted the college police department and later called the incident a "prank call."
Investigation later found the call was placed by a scam number.
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Across the state, several universities took to social media indicating they too reacted to threats that were fake.
Baylor University in Waco tweeted to its followers at 10:30 a.m. Thursday after a false alarm report, ‘no active threat on campus.’
Shortly afterward, Del Mar College in Corpus Christi tweeted saying police cleared its Heritage campus and that the situation was a hoax.
In the same time frame Galen College of Nursing in San Antonio and Texas A&M's College of Medicine in Bryan were also the scene of calls that reported threats that turned out to be bogus.