CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF)- We are learning new details about Thursday’s false shooting call at UTC, as classes resumed Friday.
A dispatch operator with Hamilton County 911 received that call Thursday at 12:29 about a shooting near the library.
That call lasted for roughly seven minutes, in which the caller claimed there was a male with an AR-15, and that four people were shot near the library.
There were several gunshots in that call according to the dispatcher.
However, police were able to quickly determine there were no shots ever fired, and no one was injured.
The call did not originate from campus.
UTC Police Chief Sean O’Brien said, “I cannot stress enough that this is a criminal act intended to cause disruption and chaos.”
Chief O’Brien says this call could share hallmarks with other swatting incidents, which could be a sign of the use of technology such as artificial intelligence.
He said, “When you look at these types of incidents, artificial intelligence may be used to distort voice, spoof phone numbers, those type of things. I can tell you that last year I was on campus at Chattanooga State when that incident occurred, and it had very similar characteristics.”
Meanwhile, classes returned to normal Friday, but the incident remained on students’ minds as several say this isn’t the first time they’ve experienced this.
This incident wasn’t even the only such one on Thursday, with Villanova University in Philadelphia also experiencing a false shooting call.
One student, Aidan Ferris, who is just starting his first semester at UTC, said, “Multiple incidents had happened like this at my high school, so it’s very unfortunate but people are used to this now, it’s really unfortunate but yeah.”
Another student in their first semester on campus, Katie, said, “In high school we had some false alerts and I kinda thought that’s high school and the school is a lot smaller. I was not expecting this to happen in college. The fact there were two false alerts at the same time was very, like, scary.”
UTC is providing counseling and other student support, as they say this will be the best way to help students process this incident.
UTC Chancellor Dr. Lori Bruce said, “The students I’ve talked to are concerned this happened, but they are eager to get back to the sense of routine with the start of the semester and did not want to disrupt their lives any more than it already had.”
The FBI is leading both investigations into the false reports here and at Villanova University.
This is the third such false school shooting incident in Chattanooga since 2023, following incidents at Brainerd High School and Chattanooga State.
