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CCSU

Report of an armed person traced to a student in a Halloween costume; three-hour lockdown

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UnfoundedNo evidence of an actual threat was found. The institutional response is documented because the alert communication is identical to what would occur during a real incident.

Around noon on November 4, 2013, 911 callers reported a suspicious, seemingly armed person on the Central Connecticut State University campus in New Britain, triggering a roughly three-hour lockdown. A witness described a man in camouflage pants, knee pads, a body-armor vest, and a paintball mask with a katana strapped to his back. The 'armed person' turned out to be 21-year-old senior David Kyem in a Halloween ninja costume; no shots were fired and no firearm was recovered.

Alerts
3
Response
—
Killed
0
Injured
0
Institution
Central Connecticut State University
Public Masters · CT
All CCSU cases →
~11,000 studentsCCSU Alert
Documented Timeline

Alert Sequence

3 messages in sequence · 2 verified verbatim

Confirmed wording is transcribed character-for-character from a primary source. Use Verify this quote under each message to open that source in a new tab and compare the text yourself.

Some messages in this sequence are documented (their existence, timing, and channel are sourced) but their exact wording is not preserved in the public record. Those entries appear as placeholders; only confirmed text is displayed.

UPDATETwitter/X
Verified verbatim72 chars
#CCSU police is on the scene. Please stay indoors and away from windows.
Verify this quote
Official Central Connecticut State University Twitter (X) post during the November 4, 2013 lockdownx.comfind archived copies
Posted from the verified CCSU X account during the active search of campus
Reiterates the 'stay indoors and away from windows' shelter posture while confirming police presence on scene
Hashtag-prefixed ('#CCSU') for discoverability, reflects the 2013-era practice of routing campus emergency updates through public Twitter rather than a closed SMS-only channel
ALL CLEARTwitter/X
Verified verbatim128 chars
The sounds that you just heard was campus police indicating that the campus is ALL CLEAR #ccsu. You may now leave the buildings.
Verify this quote
CT Mirror, quoting the official CCSU Twitter (X) all-clear messagectmirror.orgfind archived copies
The verbatim all-clear posted to the official CCSU Twitter (X) account after the roughly three-hour lockdown ended with three people taken into custody and no weapon recovered.
References an audible campus-police siren signal ('The sounds that you just heard') rather than relying solely on the text channel, a layered notification used because the lockdown ran across a public, outdoor campus.
This is a true all-clear: it explicitly lifts the shelter order ('You may now leave the buildings'), distinguishing it from the shelter directives in the earlier alerts.
Context

Background

Around noon on November 4, 2013, 911 callers reported a seemingly armed, suspicious person at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, prompting a roughly three-hour campus lockdown. A witness described a man in camouflage pants, knee pads, a body-armor vest, and a paintball mask with a katana strapped to his back. Police identified him as 21-year-old senior David Kyem, son of a CCSU professor; his father told WFSB the son had attended a multi-day party at UConn and returned to campus still in his Halloween ninja costume. CCSU issued a campus alert telling people to seek shelter, and two nearby New Britain schools locked down as a precaution. No shots were fired and no firearm was recovered; Kyem was charged with breach of peace. The case is an early, vivid example of the 'costume-as-weapon-report' pattern that recurs across the archive, and it shows how a regional Connecticut public's emergency-notification system handled a sustained, ultimately unfounded armed-person scare without injury.
Analysis

Key Findings

A report of a seemingly armed person around noon on November 4, 2013 put CCSU in a roughly three-hour lockdown
The 'armed person' was a 21-year-old student wearing a Halloween ninja costume with a katana, body armor, and a paintball mask
No shots were fired and no firearm was recovered; the student was charged with breach of peace
Two nearby New Britain schools also locked down as a precaution, showing how a campus scare can ripple into surrounding K-12 districts
Outcome
Police found no real threat: no shots were fired and no firearm was recovered. David Kyem, 21, son of a CCSU professor, was arrested and charged with breach of peace. Two nearby New Britain schools were also briefly locked down as a precaution.
Provenance

Sources

Every claim on this page is meant to be checkable. Open the links below (and the Verify this quote control under each confirmed alert) to read the original university, news, or archive page yourself. Hostnames are shown so you can see where you are going; archived copies survive when live pages move or disappear. See also our methodology.

  1. News
    CCSU Lockdown: Professor's son arrested, charged with breach of peace - CBS News
    cbsnews.com
    archived copy
  2. News
    Student Charged In CCSU Gun Scare That Prompted Lockdown - CBS New York
    cbsnews.com
    archived copy
  3. News
    CCSU Issued Campus Alert to Seek Shelter / CCSU Suspect Arrested a Second Time - NBC Connecticut
    nbcconnecticut.com
    archived copy
  4. News
    CCSU campus lockdown ends with 3 in custody - The Connecticut Mirror
    ctmirror.org
    archived copy
  5. Official
    Official Central Connecticut State University Twitter (X) post during the November 4, 2013 lockdown
    x.com
    archived copy
Cite this case

Campus Alert Archive. "Central Connecticut State University: Report of an armed person traced to a student in a Halloween costume; three-hour lockdown." Incident of November 4, 2013. Added May 2026; last updated July 2026. https://campusalertarchive.com/case/central-connecticut-state-university-costume-lockdown-2013-11-04/

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Alert text quoted on this page remains the work of the issuing institution; the archive is a secondary source.

Tags
armed-personlockdownconnecticutnew-britainhalloweencostumefalse-alarmemergency-notificationUnfounded
Added May 2026Updated July 2026Via ingestion