SAN MARCOS CISD
“I was walking in the hallway to go to the bathroom, and I see a guy walking and he had a gun in his hand and I, and I ran away,” a caller said to a San Marcos Police dispatcher in a whispering voice at 3:32 p.m. on Tuesday.
“… He told me to stop running and like aimed a gun at me,” the conversation with dispatchers continued as the caller said he was in a bathroom inside the “main building” at San Marcos High School. “I hear something. I hear somebody.”
The caller then screamed “No” and in a panicked voice said “please, please, please, please, please” before the sound of a gunshot can be heard. After a long silence another gunshot can be heard.
“San Marcos Police received a call from what we now know was a spoofed phone number,” San Marcos Police Chief Stan Standridge said in a press conference with San Marcos CISD on Thursday. “Spoofing is the act of disguising a communication from an unknown source as being from a known, trusted source. … Please note that we have since determined this call to be a hoax and consequently a criminal offense.”
San Marcos High School began Standard Response Protocol and went into lockdown. San Marcos Police and law enforcement from across the county and beyond stormed San Marcos High School.
“The high school has two school resource officers assigned, and both were on campus when this call came out via the police radio,” Standridge said. “They learned that the shooter was reportedly in a hallway, so they separated. One went upstairs and one went down stairs. That is important to note, because while it increased the danger to these officers who might be more exposed because they were working solo, it increased the safety for the students and staff because they simultaneously cleared the major hallways on two floors. I applaud their quick actions.”
Other officers arrived in less than three minutes. SWAT assumed interior command. A second sergeant remained outside the school and handled external command. More than 50 officers went inside San Marcos High School while dozens more established rescue task forces outside ready to provide medical care.
In the process, police became aware that a student reportedly saw the gunman. That student was escorted out of the school for questioning. They learned that the student had received the information from another student, who was also removed and questioned.
“The source of those text messages has been fully investigated and may result in the school district taking action,” Standridge said. He later stated that the reports from students were not related to the person who made the hoax phone call.
Within an hour, police had determined the call was a hoax. As police determined the students had not actually seen a gunman, the lockdown was lifted before. This occurred before law enforcement finished sweeping every room “because we wanted to end this intense situation,” Standridge said.
“First and foremost, I want to thank our students who handled themselves amazingly in a very difficult situation and anxiety-filled situation,” San Marcos CISD Superintendent Michael Cardona said. “To our staff members inside the building who were professional at all times, to our parents, as Chief said, who handled themselves and who were funneled to our appropriate means of communication. … I'd like to take a moment to express my heartfelt gratitude for the recognition that our community has shown to our students and our staff regarding our implementation of our standard response protocol, and for those in the community to know that San Marcos has been implementing the standard response protocols in Hays County for many, many years, and they work. It's because of the dedication and commitment of our students and staff to make our safety practices effective. Your support encourages them to continue their hard work and proceed with safety as the utmost importance. Together, we can continue to ensure a safe and nurturing environment for all our campuses.”
The call is being described as a “swatting” incident. Police identified two other school districts that received similar calls on Tuesday from the same phone number. Those were in Hunt County, Texas, and Kent County, Michigan. Standridge said there may be five more swatting incidents from the same number across the country.
“Swatting is defined as a malicious tactic of making hoax emergency calls… to an emergency service to falsely report a fictitious ongoing emergency at a particular location,” Standridge said. “This is done to cause chaos and provoke a large law enforcement response. The San Marcos offense was premeditated, as evidenced by the suspect knowing the address of the high school when asked by the dispatcher, and having pre-recorded sounds of gunfire, or at least that mimic the sounds of gunfire.”
Swatting is a felony offense if it involves a campus. Because the multiple campuses involved crossed state lines, it could qualify as a federal offense, which carries a penalty of five years of confinement.
Additionally, the call came into dispatch on the non-emergency line, which means a direct phone number was dialed as opposed to 911. A 911 call would route to the appropriate emergency services where the phone was located. Because this call came into a direct line, it means the caller may not be in the local area.
Cardona emphasized the importance of the community receiving information from official chains of communication. Multiple social media posts in San Marcos spread false information throughout the ordeal. He noted that the safety website that was set up on smcisd.net almost immediately during the lockdown was viewed nearly 30,000 times during the incident.
“Our safety protocols were in full effect, and we will always err on the side of caution,” Cardona said. “The safety of our students and our staff are our highest priorities. During these types of safety situations SMPD takes over the campus. In essence, it becomes a criminal scene, and as administrators, even I step back, let the professionals do what they need to do, and when they make a decision that the campus is safe, then we go back into play. But we always defer to law enforcement officials.”
Standridge summarized the situation.
“I think it's important to note that when this call was first received, it was treated with absolute fidelity,” Standridge said. “We would eventually prove it to be a hoax, but we responded appropriately. The school resource officers, I can't thank them enough, immediately went into action. Officers were on scene in less than three minutes. Contact teams flooded the buildings and began to systematically search the building. More than 50 officers inside searching. Those who were seen outside were part of rescue task forces here, should it be necessary, to provide medical care. We had a unified command set up within a matter of minutes, working cooperatively with Chief Les Stevens and his staff at the fire department and our EMS team. The school district was standing shoulder to shoulder exactly as we have rehearsed. So to our parents, I know this was very trying, very frustrating. We tried to communicate early and often, as Dr Cardona expressed.”
Cardona said that, in addition to the six counselors normally available to students, two more social emotional therapists are available via a state grant.
“I think the frustration for me as superintendent is more about what's happening with our students and their mental health and to our staff – that’s the frustration,” Cardona said. “The law enforcement will take care of the investigating that they need to do, but we really work hard at whole child development at San Marcos, and an incident like this that we don't control, that’s from somebody outside our building, is the frustrating part, for the kids and for the staff in the building.”
