Frazer police responded to a call Saturday from a man claiming to have shot his wife in the head and saying he was about to shoot himself — only to learn that it was all a hoax.
The call came in shortly after 3 p.m. to an Allegheny County 911 dispatcher for a shooting at an address on Bakerstown Road in a quiet corner of the Frazer/Tarentum border.
A second call came in from someone who claimed they were walking their dog by the house and heard gunshots, which police determined was from the same person trying to make the first call sound legitimate.
In addition to Frazer police, who showed up with rifles, officers from West Deer and Tarentum responded and the Allegheny County Police Department’s SWAT team was alerted.
A Eureka Fire Rescue EMS ambulance was also on the scene, and a landing spot for a medical helicopter was being identified.
But, not long after arriving, police were told by the residents of the home, an unidentified father and his teenage daughter, that there had been no shooting.
They said they were pranked by someone the girl described as a boy she had been communicating with on Discord, a popular voice, video and text chat app, used primarily by people 13 and older to talk with friends. She said she didn’t know the boy’s name.
“What happened was the teenage girl had some kind of dispute with this person on Discord, so we think these phone calls were all spoofed by someone, (and) we’ll ascertain who they were,” Frazer police Chief Terry Kuhns said.
“It sounds like he was trying to elicit personal information from this teenaged girl here. He became angry when she would not provide him with anything,” Kuhns said. “So I’m guessing that’s what started it: where this individual made bogus and false phone calls about, ‘I was doing meth, I shot my wife, I’m going to shoot myself’’ is the way the original call came in for this house.”
Once police had searched the house and determined the call was a hoax, they called off the SWAT team.
Kuhns confirmed that the caller claimed the Bakerstown address as his own. The chief added that they had no information about the person’s identity Saturday.
“At this point, we have nothing on that person we’ll call ‘the boy.’ We’re going to investigate it further. We have to learn the identity of the person who called and created this situation. We might have to get records and search warrants for the particular website or social media platform they were using.”
Kuhns said the hoax created a potentially dangerous situation for law enforcement.
“My officers called me and I said, ‘I’ll be over from my house.’ We learned quickly this was all not legitimate. Leading up to all of that was a very dangerous situation.”
