[From the official message on the incident:]
To the Yale Community:
As we announced to you via the Yale Alert system, the University has lifted the lockdown for campus.
The incident began when an anonymous call was placed from a phone booth off-campus to the New Haven Police at 9:48 a.m.. The caller, who did not identify himself, told New Haven Police that his roommate had a gun on the Yale campus. New Haven police shared this information with Yale Police, and both responded immediately, scouring the campus and the location of the phone booth off campus from which the anonymous call was placed.
A few minutes after the Yale Alert was sent to the campus community, a Yale employee called police to report that she saw a man walking on Old Campus with a rifle. It now appears that the man she saw may have been one of the early responding police officers carrying a rifle.
Besides this caller, no one reported seeing a shooter or a person with a gun on campus. Nevertheless, we kept the campus on lock down while the search for a potential gunman continued.
The combined police forces combed the area and have found no suspicious person. However, the police are taking nothing for granted. They are working to track down who made the first (anonymous) phone call and to interview thoroughly everyone involved. As the Chief of New Haven Police made clear in the news conference this afternoon, if it was a prank call that started this chain of events, the authorities intend to prosecute the individual to the fullest extent of the law.
The safety of our community is our paramount priority. I want to underscore our collective thanks to the superb mobilization of the Yale, New Haven, and State Police, and the FBI, as well as Yale’s own Emergency Response team.
I know this has been a stressful day for many, and I am grateful for the cooperation and patience of our entire community.
Sincerely,
Linda Koch Lorimer
Vice President, Yale University