Campus Alert Archive
Wake Forest

Wake Forest Again: A Third Swatting Hits Reynolda in Finals Week

NCswattingemergency notificationhigh confidence
Confirmed HoaxDetermined to be a hoax. The institutional response is documented because it reveals how the alert system performed under a perceived real threat.

On the morning of May 5, 2026, Wake Forest University Police and Winston-Salem Police responded to a swatting call on the Reynolda Campus during the final week of the spring semester. The initial Wake Alert was issued at 11:50 a.m. EDT, with an update at 12:01 p.m. confirming the call was a false report consistent with swatting. It marked Wake Forest's third high-profile swatting since 2023.

Alerts
2
Response
—
Killed
—
Injured
—
Institution
Wake Forest University
Private R1 · NC
~9,100 studentsWake Alert
Confirmed Timeline

Alert Sequence

2 messages in sequence · 2 verified verbatim

INITIAL ALERTmulti-channel
Verified verbatimWake Alert front page archive of the May 5, 2026 emergency notification54 chars
Wake Alert Emergency: Heavy police presence on campus.
Issued at 11:50 a.m. EDT on May 5, 2026 — the morning of the last full day of spring-semester classes before reading day
The terse phrasing — used Wake Alert's standard 'Heavy police presence' template rather than naming the threat — because dispatchers had not yet confirmed what was happening
Wake Forest had also been swatted in April 2023 and was hit by a separate incident in 2024, making this the third documented swatting on the Reynolda Campus
UPDATEmulti-channel+24 min
Verified verbatimWake Alert archive — Wake Forest University official alert archive page492 chars
University Police, in coordination with the Winston-Salem Police Department, responded to a report of a swatting attempt on the Reynolda campus this morning. The report has been determined to be false and consistent with a swatting call. There is no threat to the campus community. Out of an abundance of caution, officers responded with a visible law enforcement presence while the report was being assessed. Updates will be shared at wakealert.wfu.edu if more information becomes available.
Sent at approximately 12:14 p.m. EDT on May 5, 2026 — about 24 minutes after the initial alert, with an update at 12:16 p.m.; the exact wording was confirmed from the Wake Alert archive and reproduced in WFMY News 2 reporting
The update explicitly named 'swatting' rather than 'hoax' — a vocabulary shift increasingly common among universities responding to the fall 2025 Purgatory wave
Wake Forest did not enter formal lockdown; officers swept buildings while classes continued elsewhere on the Reynolda Campus
Context

Background

On the morning of May 5, 2026, Wake Forest University Police and the Winston-Salem Police Department responded to a swatting attempt on the Reynolda Campus, the main residential campus in northwest Winston-Salem. The first Wake Alert went out at 11:50 a.m. EDT with the standard 'Heavy police presence on campus' template, and an update at 12:01 p.m. confirmed the report was false and consistent with swatting. Officers responded out of an abundance of caution; no buildings were locked down and no suspect was identified. The 11-minute interval between alerts was notably faster than Wake Forest's response to the April 2023 hoax at Reynolda, and far faster than the 82-minute delay that triggered scandal at the University of Pittsburgh under a similar swatting attack two years earlier. Wake Forest's improved cadence reflected lessons-learned from a year of false active-shooter calls that had hit dozens of US colleges since the Purgatory group's August 2025 spree.
Analysis

Key Findings

The 11-minute interval between initial alert and false-report update was a notable improvement over Wake Forest's prior swatting responses, suggesting institutional learning from 2023-2025 incidents
Wake Forest used the deliberately vague 'Heavy police presence on campus' template rather than naming the threat — a hedging strategy increasingly common in 2025-2026 swatting responses
May 5 fell during finals week; the timing maximized disruption to students preparing for exams, a pattern noted in several 2025-2026 swatting cases
Outcome
Officers responded with a visible law enforcement presence while the report was assessed. The report was determined to be false within roughly 11 minutes of the first alert. No injuries, no weapon recovered, and no suspect identified at the time of all-clear.
Provenance

Sources

  1. News
    'SWATTING' call prompts heavy police presence at Wake Forest University (WFMY News 2)
    wfmynews2.com
  2. national media
    Swatting call prompts heavy police presence (Yahoo News)
    yahoo.com
  3. Official
    Wake Alert (front-page archive)
    wakealert.wfu.edu
  4. News
    Hundreds of dangerous fake emergency calls placed each year (WSMV)
    wsmv.com
Tags
swattingwake-alertreynoldanorth-carolinafinals-weekprivate-r1accHoax
Added May 2026Updated May 2026Via ingestion