BOULDER, Colo. — Boulder High School went on lockdown Wednesday morning after someone called a non-emergency dispatch number and said he had a gun and was prepared to go inside the school, Boulder Police Chief Maris Herold said.
Officers went room-to-room to clear the school. No shooter was located, and no injuries were reported.
Classes were canceled, and students were dismissed for the remainder of the day. After-school activities were also canceled.
Herold said the call came in to the University of Colorado's non-emergency dispatch center around 8:33 a.m.
"We had a caller relay that he was out in front of Boulder High School, he had semi-automatic weapons, and that he was prepared to go into the high school," Herold said. "And shortly thereafter, there was active shooting – very realistic gun sounds – in the background."
Herold described the call as "very scary."
“This is the scariest kind of 911 call you can get, especially when you look across the country and you see how many of these shootings are occurring," she said.
>Video below: Police give update after threat forces Boulder High School to close
Buses were brought in to evacuate students to Macky Auditorium on the University of Colorado campus. Boulder Valley School District said staff would stay with the students until their parents were able to pick them up.
During the initial response Wednesday morning, police sent a shelter-in-place order and asked the public to avoid the area around Boulder High School. The shelter-in-place was from Taft Drive to Folsom Street to Highway 119 to Highway 93. It has since been lifted.
Herold said there's no evidence to suggest that the person who made the call was ever at the school.
The school district said the school has a late start on Wednesday mornings, so they were able to alert most parents and students before they arrived. About 198 people were evacuated from the school after the lockdown, the district said.
The call was one of several threats called into schools across Colorado Wednesday.
On Wednesday afternoon, Boulder Valley School District tweeted that the district "appears to be the latest victim of 'swatting," which is when someone makes a false call to police claiming an emergency and providing a real address for officers to respond to.
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