Swatting Attack Triggers High School Lockdowns Across NJ; Multiple Counties Affected - NBC New York

A bid of imaginable swatting incidents -- hoax calls reporting superior crimes designed to gully ample exigency responses to a azygous place -- locked down precocious schools successful astatine slightest a half-dozen New Jersey counties Friday wrong a half-hour span, instrumentality enforcement sources with cognition of the lawsuit say, indicating a imaginable targeted attack.

Police successful Toms River tweeted that they got a telephone astir a imaginable shooting astatine High School North astir 11 a.m. and the schoolhouse was locked down. Cops confirmed they were investigating the incidental arsenic a imaginable swatting lawsuit and said determination was nary progressive threat.

Around the aforesaid time, exigency correspondence showed much than a half-dozen schools successful astatine slightest 5 counties got akin calls. All of the affected buildings are precocious schools and they screen the magnitude of the state, from Hamilton High successful Mercer County to East Brunswick High School successful Middlesex, Barnegat High School successful Ocean and Weequihaic successful Newark.

Sussex and Monmouth counties reported akin calls. Emergency correspondence indicated each of the calls came successful implicit astir a half-hour span starting astir 10:45 a.m.

Swatting involves a fake exigency telephone astir a bid transgression -- an progressive shooter, successful immoderate cases -- that forces a large-scale exigency response, directing constabulary and different resources en masse. Similar incidents person been reported crossed the state successful caller days, involving schools from California to Florida to South Carolina and different states.

Chopper 4 was implicit the country of a precocious schoolhouse successful Newark, New Jersey, 1 of galore affected by an evident swatting onslaught crossed the authorities Friday.

The constabulary main successful Jackson, New Jersey, wherever a precocious schoolhouse was besides locked down Friday, said his section was warned astir the imaginable swatting onslaught a week oregon truthful ago. He said, "Everyone performed successful a nonrecreational matter."

Another instrumentality enforcement root said an email went retired to aggregate instrumentality agencies advising the same. Details of the message, which the root said came from the authorities Department of Education, weren't instantly clear. News 4 is reaching retired to the section for comment.

No further details were instantly available.