Murphy – A report of an active shooter at Murphy High School appears to have been part of a multi-county and multi-state hoax.
Members of several Cherokee County law enforcement agencies responded to an emergency call at 11:47 a.m. Thursday reporting a "specific threat" and "multiple students injured," according to Chris Wood with the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office. Wood said the caller identified themselves as a teacher of a specific subject at Murphy High. He added that similar calls were made about the same time in Brevard and Hendersonville.
"At the same time ours was going on, they had one at Brevard and at North Henderson High School," Wood said. "At 12:09, we were advised that we could resume normal traffic on the radio and that the school was clear."
According to WRAL.com, at least a half dozen North Carolina schools investigated reports of a shooter on campus Thursday morning.
A day earlier, several counties in Georgia experienced similar hoaxes. Those cases are already being investigated by the FBI as "domestic acts of terrorism," according to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. Wood likewise expects the incidents in Murphy and other North Carolina towns to be handled by federal investigators.
Similar hoaxes across the nation in recent months have been attributed to an epidemic of viral "swatting challenges" spread on the social media platform TikTok. These challenges appear to be aimed simply at disrupting schools and drawing massive responses from law enforcement agencies.
Wood said he'd just read about school-shooting hoaxes in other states Thursday morning, but had already forgotten about it by the time the call about Murphy came in. Regardless, law enforcement response would have been the same.
"You can never assume a hoax until you know it's not the truth," Wood said. "Our training procedures for this, statewide, no matter which agency you're with, is that the first man there is the first man in.
"We do not wait for a certain number of officers before we make contact with a shooter. In an instance like this where you arrive and there isn't a shooter you can hear, you still go in and you start the process of clearing the campus."
Wood credited Thursday's response by local emergency personnel, including the sheriff's office, Murphy Police Department, Andrews Police Department, State Bureau of Investigation, N.C. Highway Patrol and Murphy Fire Department.
"The first officer on the scene was from Murphy Police Department," Wood said. "He went inside and attempted to locate and would have engaged any (shooter) that was there, but nobody was located. Of course, everybody began to filter in – and I don't know how many officers were there, but there were a lot."
Read the full story in the Dec. 7 edition of the Cherokee Scout.