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SLC family safe after ‘swatting’ call early Thursday morning

Posted at 2:13 PM, Mar 21, 2019
and last updated 2019-03-21 18:07:42-04

SALT LAKE CITY — A Salt Lake City family is unharmed after police received a false report of a shooting early Thursday morning.

Police responded to a home near 300 W and 400 N around 2 a.m. after someone made an emergency call and claimed to have shot people inside the home.

An SLCPD representative said this was an incident of “swatting,” a dangerous prank that results in a large police response to an address where no threat was present.

“It does happen occasionally, I do know it’s kind of a nation-wide problem as well. Fortunately, we don’t see a ton of it here, but we still have to take every one of them seriously until we can verify otherwise,” said Lt. Scott Smalley.

Police said the emergency call had been placed from a disconnected cellphone and officers were unable to track the call’s origin.

The homeowner told police he isn’t aware of anyone who might’ve wanted to prank him.