Sleeping Sacramento Family Surprised By Hoax 'Swatting' Call
NORTH SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Police are investigating a hoax emergency call that led to a massive tactical response on a sleeping family's North Sacramento home early Friday morning.
Dispatch recordings describe a terrifying scene playing out inside the home:
Dispatcher: "...Now he's saying he's got an AR and a 9 millimeter..."
Dispatcher: "...I've got a (inaudible) saying he shot his mother and sister..."
Dispatcher: "...and he's also saying he will shoot anyone that comes near the door..."
A woman who lives inside the Yampa Circle home did not want to be identified. She said she and her husband and daughter were asleep while the police first surrounded the home.
"You know, it was a surprise," she said. "And I only got alerted because our chihuahua was barking and I couldn't figure out why. My main thing was, 'Are they calling someone from outside? Is someone on the side of my house? Or are they calling for us?'"
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She called 911 and followed police orders carefully.
"Because I've seen other videos, and I just listened to what the officers were saying, and I made sure any move I made they heard me," she said.
Sacramento police were able to confirm this was no shooting scene. It was a 'swatting' scene.
"And they said, 'Have you heard of swatting?' and me and my daughter's like, 'Yeah we've heard of it,'" she said.
Swatting is a new trend in hoaxes, calling police with a fake emergency in an effort to have a SWAT team descend on unsuspecting victims.
"Any type of threat with a gun, at any time especially in the world we live in today, we're going to take this very seriously and an investigation is going to follow up on the caller and be taken very seriously as well," Lieutenant Joshua Dobson said.
A terrifying call for service, that turned out to be fake, putting a sleeping family at the center of a dangerous prank.