Everything We Know About the Fake School Shooting at Hurricane High School on April 1

Dozens of officers from various law enforcement groups gathered at Hurricane High School in the afternoon of April 1 to respond to a reported active shooter situation but found no signs of any shooter or proof that they ever existed in the first place. 

Sgt. Dan Raddatz from the Hurricane City Police Department provided updates on the situation through the HCPD Facebook page. 

Sgt. Raddatz said, “We’ve had officers from every agency from within Washington County here helping out with this active shooter response. The information that I can give you is that our dispatch received two non-emergency phone calls from people alleging to be inside of Hurricane High School.” 

Hurricane police arrived within two minutes of receiving two separate non-emergency phone calls which both stated there was a shooter in the high school and that students were hiding in the library and auditorium. 

Sgt. Raddatz said, “All the while that our officers were inside the school, they never heard any gunshots. They never saw anything to support that gunshots were ever fired from inside the school.” 

After searching Hurricane High School several times over, the police deemed the threat to be non-existent. Six teachers and 23 students were at the school when police arrived and were promptly evacuated safely. The 29 people said they never heard any gunshots. This case is believed to be another example of Swatting, which is essentially a prank call to divert police resources to a specific location. 

If this was the alleged prank caller’s goal, they unfortunately succeeded since officers from The Hurricane City Police Department, Washington City Police Department, St. George Police Department, Santa Clara-Ivins Police Department, Washington County Sheriff’s Office, FBI, and many other law enforcement groups all responded to the reports of the school shooting. No arrests or charges have been issued at this time, but the law enforcement of Washington County is tracing the two phone calls to ascertain the location of the callers.