Campus Alert Archive
Yale

Phoned report of a gunman prompts six-hour shelter-in-place; determined to be a hoax

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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 Monday morning, November 25, 2013 (the same day Connecticut released the official report on the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting) an anonymous male called 911 from a pay phone on Columbus Avenue in New Haven and claimed that his roommate was on his way to Yale University with a gun. Yale issued a shelter-in-place alert at 10:17 AM EST (29 minutes after the 911 call) and locked down its Old Campus for the next six hours while SWAT teams from Yale Police, New Haven Police, the Connecticut State Police, the FBI, and the ATF conducted a room-by-room search of the historic quad. No gunman was found.

Alerts
4
Response
29 min
Killed
0
Injured
0
Institution
Yale University
Private R1 · CT
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~13,400 studentsYale Alert
Official alert policy
Read when and how Yale says it will use Yale ALERT: summarized, quoted, and analyzed.
Documented Timeline

Alert Sequence

4 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.

UPDATEEmail
Verified verbatim488 chars
New Haven Police have received an anonymous call from a phone booth in the 300 block of Columbus Avenue (between Howard Avenue and Hallock Street) reporting a person on the Yale Campus with a gun. There have been NOT confirmations or sightings of this person. Yale and New Haven police are in the area. If you have information, please call 911 immediately. Yale Police advises those on campus to remain in their current location and shelter in place until there is additional information.
Verify this quote
CNN coverage quoting the more detailed Yale Alert email follow-up messagecnn.comfind archived copies
The typo 'There have been NOT confirmations' is preserved verbatim, likely a rushed substitution of 'NOT' for 'no' under pressure
Names the precise location of the pay phone (300 block of Columbus Avenue between Howard and Hallock), unusual specificity for a campus alert and indicates how much information had been triaged in the first 90 minutes
Walks back the 'Confirmed' framing of the first SMS by stating explicitly: 'no confirmations or sightings of this person'
UPDATESMS
Verified verbatim212 chars
When (police) knock on your door, a Yale Police Officer will slip their Yale ID under the door. Please cooperate. In some cases, Police may use keys, but they will identify themselves. Shelter in Place continues.
Verify this quote
NBC News, quoting the verbatim Yale Alert sent at 1:45 PM EST on November 25, 2013; corroborated by Yale Daily News coveragenbcnews.comfind archived copies
Recovered verbatim from NBC News, which quoted the 1:45 PM EST Yale Alert word-for-word; the Yale Daily News independently described the same message (police identifying themselves by slipping a Yale ID under the door), confirming the wording
The '(police)' parenthetical is reproduced exactly as NBC News rendered it; the message instructed sheltering students how to verify that officers entering their rooms were legitimate Yale Police during the room-by-room SWAT search
By 1:45 PM EST, SWAT teams had been conducting room-by-room searches of Old Campus and the residential colleges for several hours with no signs of a gunman, a sustained posture rare in U.S. campus emergencies
Context

Background

The November 25, 2013, Yale shelter-in-place hoax is widely cited as one of the earliest sophisticated 'swatting' attacks against a major U.S. university, and it occurred on a day already saturated with gun-violence news, as Connecticut authorities released their official report on the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting the same morning. At 9:48 AM EST, an anonymous male called 911 from a pay phone at the 300 block of Columbus Avenue in New Haven, about a mile from the Yale campus. He told dispatchers his roommate was 'on his way to the Yale campus to shoot people.' New Haven Police relayed the call to Yale Police, who issued a Yale Alert at 10:17 AM EST using the phrase 'Confirmed report', although no one on campus ever sighted a gunman. For the next six hours, a multi-agency response that included Yale Police, New Haven Police, Connecticut State Police, the FBI, the ATF, and West Haven SWAT conducted room-by-room searches of Old Campus (Yale's historic first-year quad) and surrounding buildings. The shelter-in-place was lifted at approximately 4:30 PM EST, with no gunman found and no evidence of any actual threat. Police traced the 911 call to the Columbus Avenue pay phone; about five months later, in April 2014, Jeffrey Jones, 50, of Westbrook was charged with falsely reporting an incident, threatening, reckless endangerment, misuse of the 911 system, and breach of peace. The case prefigured the school-swatting wave that would later target dozens of U.S. universities in 2022-2026, and became a template for understanding how false reports made via untraceable pay phones could trigger multi-hour campus lockdowns and full SWAT mobilizations.
Analysis

Key Findings

Yale sent its first alert 29 minutes after the 911 call; the first SMS described the report as a 'Confirmed report of person with a gun,' although no gunman had been seen on campus
The 6-hour-plus shelter-in-place order (covering thousands of undergraduates trapped in Old Campus dormitories) was one of the longest documented Yale lockdowns and required a multi-agency response involving five different law-enforcement agencies
The incident is one of the earliest well-documented 'swatting' attacks against a U.S. university, prefiguring the much larger swatting wave that would target dozens of campuses 2022-2026
The hoax fell on the same day Connecticut released the official Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting report, a coincidence that shaped both the institutional response and the public reaction
Outcome
The lockdown was lifted at approximately 4:30 PM EST after a multi-agency search yielded no gunman and no evidence of any threat. Police traced the 911 call to a pay phone at 300 Columbus Avenue. About five months later, in April 2014, Connecticut authorities charged Jeffrey Jones, 50, of Westbrook, with falsely reporting an incident, threatening, reckless endangerment, misuse of the 911 system, and breach of peace. The case is widely cited as one of the earliest documented 'swatting' hoaxes targeting a major U.S. university.
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
    Lockdown lifted at Yale hours after initial 911 call (CNN)
    cnn.com
    archived copy
  2. News
    Yale issues shelter-in-place alert while authorities investigate report of person with gun (Fox News)
    foxnews.com
    archived copy
  3. News
    Yale Lockdown Caused By Hoax, Police Say (ABC News)
    abcnews.go.com
    archived copy
  4. News
    Connecticut man charged in Yale hoax threat (CBS News)
    cbsnews.com
    archived copy
  5. News
    Lockdown lifted at Yale campus after shooting threat (NBC News)
    nbcnews.com
    archived copy
  6. News
    Gunman Sighting Now Likely 'Innocent Mistake' (New Haven Independent)
    newhavenindependent.org
    archived copy
  7. News
    Arrest Made in Yale Hoax Shooting Report (NBC Connecticut)
    nbcconnecticut.com
    archived copy
Cite this case

Campus Alert Archive. "Yale University: Phoned report of a gunman prompts six-hour shelter-in-place; determined to be a hoax." Incident of November 25, 2013. Added May 2026; last updated July 2026. https://campusalertarchive.com/case/yale-university-shelter-in-place-hoax-2013-11-25/

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

Tags
swattinghoaxshelter-in-placeold-campuspay-phone-callmulti-agency-responsesandy-hook-context2013Hoax
Added May 2026Updated July 2026Via ingestion