Last Monday at 3:30 p.m. Department of Student Life received a call from an alleged gunman threatening to come to campus and shoot students, staff and faculty which they determined to not be a credible threat. The caller said he planned to enter one of the residence halls and begin shooting. The caller said he was prepared to shoot police and campus safety as well as students and staff.
Because the Denver Polcie Department has dealt with the caller before on other occasions, they deemed the shooting threat to not be credible. He said DPD officers were able to recognize the caller by his voice and the phone number he was calling from.
“The Denver Police Department is very familiar with this individual,” said Campus Safety Crime Prevention Sgt. Stpehen Banet.
According to Banet, the caller lives in another country with which the United States “does not have diplomatic relations” The caller has no known ties or connections at DU.
Banet said the alleged gunman “alluded to being near campus” during the call and said he was seeing people with backpacks as he drove.
The call was transferred from the Office of Student Life to the Department of Campus Safety (DCS) dispatch, who tried to keep the caller on the line as long as possible to assess the situation.
Banet said the suspect told officers he had a fully automatic rifle and was prepared to come to campus and start shooting.
“The person on the line was saying that they were angry with DU and a lot of things in general, but would not specify the problem,” said Banet.
According to the DCS report, the caller told dispatch he was a friend of Adam Lanza, the suspect of the mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut that took place Dec. 14. The caller told dispatch he was prepared to “make today the worst day in US history.”
The Denver Police Department (DPD) was called to the scene as the DCS dispatch officer continued to talk with the caller.
Upon arrival, DPD was able to determine that the call was not a credible threat based on previous threatening calls he had made to other locations in Denver.
According to Banet, the caller has called threats of a similar nature previously, including a bomb threat.
In response to the call, DCS day officers were kept on duty for several hours after their shifts, and the night shift was brought in a few hours early. DPD also supplied some officers to assist in sweeps on campus.
The Denver Police Department was unable to comment beyond saying that when called to the scene they were able to determine the threats were not credible.
Banet said it is not that unusual for DCS to receive threatening calls to campus. This is the second threatening call of this school year, the first being a bomb threat called in to University Technology Services (UTS) in October. He said the university has also received several bomb threats in the past few years.
However, he said Campus Safety takes each call very seriously, especially in the wake of the mass shootings in Connecticut and Aurora this past year.
Banet said DCS works closely with DPD officers, who have been familiarized with the university campus and buildings and identified points of assembly so they would be able to respond effectively if there ever was an active shooter on campus.
